Kate Winslet is finally feeling young, she tells Rob Lowing

Cannes, 1997, Azure-eyed Kate Winslet was fresh off the physical marathon that had been shooting Titanic. She talkes fast, smoke intensely and seemed very focused. You couldn't call her serious - she had a lovely laugh - but there was a certain kind of gravitas. She was the most mature 21 year old you'd ever be likely to meet.

Los Angeles 1999. Winslet is physically and emotionally a world away from where she was three years before. The now married, more "fun and free" actress was in town to promote Holy Smoke. It's the movie she calls a "truly liberating" experience for her on every level and not just because it's one of the few films she's done in which she is not in corsets. Holy smoke is the latest from director Jane Campion, the revered actors' director who made women's pain a box office draw card with 'The Piano', 'An Angel at My Table' and 'Portrait of a Lady'. Winslet plays a young Australian woman involved with an Indian cult, or so her distraught family believes. The family hires an "exit cousnellor", a blustering American played by Harvey Kietel. On a remote Outback property, you woman and older man battle for emotional and sexual supremacy.

Winslets suprising take on the film? "I think it's really funny," she said of a plotline which has alreadyd rawn raised eyebrows and a mixed reaction from the press at the recent Venice Film Festival. "For me, its not about a girl having sexual relations with an older man at all. It's a power game. These two people are compelled together." Three years ago, Winslet noted she wasn't interested in making the "right" career moves. Now she's something of a role model for young female actors who want to emulate her knack for big hit romantic lead roles which are also character driven. Winslet has never flinched from commiting to her films. She stripped full frontal for the dour period tale Jude. She personally tracked down Titanic director Jim Cameron by Car Phone, using an American accent to become "this screaming actress telling him she has to do the film." But Holy Smoke, scripted by Campion and her siter Anna (director of Loaded), required her to be more physically vulnerable than ever before. "Jane is in a league of her own," said Winslet. "She's veryd riven, she does push her actors."

The Director once made all The Piano actors swap their characters clothes on set which reportedly left Harvey Keitel in a child's dress. Campion is famous, as Winslet puts it, for "Pulling things out I was surprised I had in me" Actors ador her. Even Keitel, who's known as a grumpy, grunting kind of interviewee in press circles, raves to journalists. The secret is partially in the improvisation. "We did loads, some of which ended up in the final cut of the movie. She'd say, 'No, play the scene with this thought in mind'." Winslet said she worked her heart out on Holy Smoke, which was shot in both Australia and India. The actress born and raised in Reading, West of London, was terrified about slipping on her Australian Accent. "I'd sit there going through my list of words, the particular vowels. It was a bloody headache but you have get it right otherwise people have a go at you," she said. "Harvey is a very lovely man, Very calm. He and I used to laugh about how disciplined we were - exercising, eating the right foods to keep our energy levels up. We'd sit and fantasise about the first thing we'd do after the shoot. I said mine was going to patisserie Calerie in Old Compton Street, Soho, and eating a huge basket of croissants. He said 'Im going to Paris and doing exactly the same thing'."

Winslet plans to spend the next year at home, after just finishing her latest movie 'Quills' - "it's a story about the Marquis De Sade with the lovely Geoffrey Rush." Then she'll "put in a lot of work to earn that title" of executive producer (and star) of the June 200 shoot of Therese Raquin, which is based on Emile Zola's novel. For the first time in a decade of working, Winslet says she feels older than her age. I started acting professionally when I was 13, at 17 I was bundled of to New Zealand, scared, to make my first film (Heavenly Creatures). I had a taste of real life outside of education. That kind of launched me into having to keep a wise head. "Since being married to Jim (assistant director Jim Threapleton), I can honestly say that for the first time I actually feel my age. I feel 24, I feel young and fun and open and free. And I think it's because Jim and I are virtually the same age. Right now, I feel quite secure with who I am. That's not common with young women, even under the age of 30 or maybe ever."

Holy smoke Opens on December 26.