British actress KATE WINSLET was forced to make big changes to her research for her latest movie role - because she found it far too upsetting.

The 27-year-old screen star, who appears alongside KEVIN SPACEY in THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE, plays a journalist trying to discover the truth about a murder just days before Gale's execution.

And as part of her research, Winslet opted to read through America's history on capital punishment - but it proved to be a too distressing for her.

She says, "Of course, in preparing for it, I had to read up a lot about the system and so forth.

"I had to read some stuff that, frankly, I didn't like reading. When research materials are giving you information about prisoners' last meals, that's not nice. In fact, I got halfway through a lot of the material and I just had to stop reading it because it's very, very depressing just to know those things.

"So I ended up focusing much more on just the journalism side and creating who my character really was."