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Kate's in Full Bloom | January 24, 2002 | ||||||||||||
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Playing novelist Iris Murdoch was a revealing experience, Kate Winslet tells JOAN KRZYS., Daily Telegraph LET'S get this straight. Kate Winslet plays the esteemed philosophical novelist Iris Murdoch, an intellectual through and through, on the big screen and still cavorts in the nude?
"Despite the nasty joke I've heard that it's written in my contract that I'm guaranteed the opportunity to do nude scenes in every one of my pictures, it's not so. It just happens," says Winslet, laughing. It happened in Titanic, Hideous Kinky, Holy Smoke and Quills. And in her latest film, Iris, in which she plays the young Murdoch (Judi Dench takes over the role in old age) she flings off her clothes before jumping into a clear pond. "Iris loved swimming in the altogether. Why on earth would we not include that in a film biography of her?" Promoting Iris is not all laughs, though. Winslet says she does not look back when she evaluates her career or wraps up the final details of her impending divorce. "I go for it and have no regrets," she says, her jaw firmly set and her eyes blazing. "That's my motto. That's also Iris' motto." In the movie, Iris Murdoch's heyday and her later decline are painstakingly chronicled. Winslet plays Murdoch as a free-spirited prodigy at Oxford; Judi Dench plays Murdoch in her 70s as Alzheimer's Disease robs her of her intellectual powers. The Anglo-Irish writer is a legend and until her death two years ago she was frequently described as "the most brilliant woman in England". She lectured on philosophy at Oxford and wrote 26 penetrating, genre-busting novels that have been described as "psychological detective stories portraying complicated and sophisticated sexual relationships". The most intriguing aspect of Murdoch's life was her 43-year marriage to British literary critic John Bayley. They lived happily together, without children, until 1997 when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Until then, Bayley had been the subordinate partner. But as the illness overtook his wife he suddenly found himself looking after a woman who was rapidly disappearing into herself. He wrote in his memoirs about their early days: "It's like living in a fairy story. I'm the young man in love with a beautiful maiden who disappears to an unknown and mysterious world every now and again."
Winslet found some common ground with the remarkable Murdoch. "Iris clearly didn't regret things or wallow in sad emotions. She very much got on with it. She always saw the inner beauty in people. I think that's very similar to me." Directed by British master Richard Eyre, Iris alternates in time between Bayley's timid courtship of Murdoch at Oxford and his frustrated attempts to preserve some normality in the dark days of her decline. As Bayley, whose memoirs are the basis for the film, Hugh Bonneville plays opposite Winslet and Jim Broadbent opposite Dench, a performance that won him a Golden Globe for best supporting actor this week. "It's a genuine love story about two people who absolutely adored and accepted each other for everything they were," Winslet says. "It's not about Alzheimer's, although that side of the story is simply the tragic truth of what did actually happen to this wonderful woman. It's more about the incredible love, commitment and support that John Bayley gave to her when she was suffering," she says. Although Winslet is on screen for less than half the film, she imbues her scenes with Murdoch's enormous zest for life. Whether she is arguing a literary point over lunch, swimming naked in that pond or bicycling madly down a country lane with Bayley in pursuit, the dazzling young author is a genuine free spirit. "Iris had an amazing ability to be in touch with her emotions and not judge herself," says Winslet, who watched documentaries about Murdoch and also immersed herself in Bayley's memoirs. "She was really a person who saw the good things in life." It was Eyre's idea to cast Winslet as the young Murdoch. "He said in some way I was like a clone and an alter ego of Judi. That both of us have an identical spirit, which harmonises perfectly, that I'm a very mature and thoughtful woman and my greatest strength is similar to Judi's – my humanity. Winslet doesn't disagree. "Who am I to argue with the great Richard Eyre?" She was honoured and challenged to share the role with Dench. "We didn't talk beforehand about how we would walk or speak. But I did watch a couple of scenes that Judi shot so I could get a little sense of what she was doing," she says. Iris gives Winslet her first opportunity to play a fully-adult woman. "I play Iris at about 30 and I'm 26," she says. "I've always been told I'm wiser than my years, so I didn't find that so difficult. "But I did worry because she's obviously far more intelligent and intellectual than I am. But her writing was wonderful and the level of intellect was built into the dialogue,," Winslet says. She relied a great deal on Eyre, who co-wrote the script with Charles Wood. "Whenever I enter into a new project with a new director, there's often an assumption that I know what I'm doing," says Winslet. "I told Richard, 'Direction is important to me, particularly for this film because Iris is such a complex person, so strong and such a big personality. Don't ever let me get away with anything. Don't ever print a take that you think I could do better'. "Sometimes I'd have no idea how to play the scene, and I'd say, 'Richard, help me out'." In the end Winslet says she is proud of the final result. "When I watch the movie, Judi and I really feel like the same person. It was a tremendous comfort and a huge relief. The level of emotion and intellect we both had to carry is similar, and we did appear to give across the same qualities. It must have been that we both felt the same way about who Iris was." Winslet is reverential toward Murdoch and was greatly touched when Bayley said to her during filming, "Oh yes, you rather do look like Iris, although Iris was a little larger and her nose was a little more snubby." Leaning forward, she says, "Iris lived her life as it came to her. She was also instinctively very private. She was bisexual and had lots of affairs with men and women at the same time. She didn't think there was anything wrong with that because she never committed herself to anyone truly. "Then she met John and he was the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. I think it's a universal story. We all want to be with a life partner and hope that it's everlasting. Sometimes it doesn't happen," Winslet says. Inevitably questions surface about the breakup of her three-year marriage to assistant film director Jim Threapleton, with whom she has a daughter, Mia, now 15 months old. "The details of the divorce are completely confidential," she says. "Life is life, and divorce happens to lots of people. When your first priority is the happiness of your child, that is the first thing you have to think about and then act accordingly. That's simply what we did." Until recently Winslet was entirely forthcoming about her personal life but now she has changed her tune. "I'm getting more private as I get older, especially in terms of relationships. I basically won't talk about them." So she has no comment about her new partner Sam Mendes, the director of American Beauty. "I'm being very frank and open and not particularly planning what I say," she says.
"But you don't really know me, who I really am. Only my family and friends will ever really know." At the moment, her main concern is her daughter Mia. Tenderly she mentions a link between her tot and Iris. "Mia loves watching Teletubbies – as did Iris toward the end." Winslet is also not daunted about now taking on the role of single mother. "There's an instinctive strength that just kicks in. I didn't get a nanny until she was nine months old. It's absolutely exhausting, but I wanted to experience all those things. "I feel very much like a woman, although I have my girly moments. "Having had a child, I feel stronger and more in tune with who I am. It changes your life, but it hasn't changed me as a person. "I still have enormous determination and strength. I feel as though I can accomplish anything," she says. | |||||||||||||
Source: The Daily Telegraph (Australia) | |||||||||||||
