KATE RETURNS TO THE SPOTLIGHT
THE TITANIC ACTRESS IS BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT WITH MORE CONFIDENCE – AND GRIT – THAN SHE'S EVER HAD BEFORE
It’s been more than two decades since British star Kate Winslet enjoyed this same level of fame. “It’s like Titanic again,” she tells The New York Times. “I’m on the side of buses again! I’m walking down the street and people are nudging and pointing and whispering again.”
What’s got the world talking about Winslet is her portrayal of the deeply flawed Philadelphia detective Mare Sheehan in the gripping and gritty HBO television series Mare of Easttown.
Back then she wasn’t ready for the intense personal and physical scrutiny that came with the instant stardom. But this time around the Oscar winner has unshakeable confidence in herself. “I feel very proud of my 45-year-old self,’’ she says. “I am who I am.’’
Set in a small town in the wake of the murder of a teenage mother, Mare of Easttown was originally only meant to be a seven-part miniseries. But, an overwhelming response from audiences and critics has buzz building that it will be green lit for a second season.
Winslet believes that people have connected with the foul-mouthed, flanniewearing cop because “there are clearly no filters’’, something we don’t see often enough. “She’s a fully functioning, flawed woman with a body and a face that moves in a way that is synonymous with her age and her life and where she comes from,’’ she told The New York Times. “I think we’re starved of that a bit.’’
Winslet’s self-assuredness has seen her take on the role in a way few other Hollywood stars would be keen to match. She insisted that her “bulgy bit of belly’’ not be cut from sex scenes with her co-star Guy Pearce and that her image in promotional posters for the bingeworthy series remained untouched. “Don’t you dare!” she told director Craig Zobel, when he offered to make sure the scene was flattering to her. “The way my face is now, I have the wrinkles and crunkles that exist on my face now,’’ she told Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. “I’m proud of
“I’m on the side of buses again!”
—WINSLET
those things. The ageing on the back of my hands that have loved and lost and cared for – I really, really value and appreciate being able to show all of those things without censorship and hesitation. There’s a lot to be said for that and maybe I’m confident enough to do that now, whereas I definitely wouldn’t have been when I was younger.’’
TOUGH BEGINNINGS
Winslet has endured scrutiny of her body since she first dreamed of being an actor as a child. Born into a working-class acting family in Berkshire in south-west England (her father Roger was an actor while her mother Sally’s parents ran the local repertory theatre company), she knew from a young age she wanted to follow in their footsteps. But that hope could’ve easily been dashed in school, where bullies teased Winslet about her size and said she would never be a success.
The cruel treatment reduced her to tears daily but also fuelled her self-determination and steely resilience. “I was called Blubber [at school],’’ she has revealed. “I had kids lock me in a cupboard and say, ‘Blubber’s blubbing in the cupboard.’ But somehow, I had this inner determination. It was horrible. I would go home. I would cry. I wouldn’t want to go back to school the next day. But I knew that I wanted to be an actress one day. And I just had to push it to one side. I had to push those horrible bullies and those awful feelings to one side and just hang on to my dream.’’
MAKING WAVES
That dream was realised in a way she could never have imagined when she became an international star almost overnight when Titanic hit cinemas in 1997. Until the release of the James Cameron blockbuster, which went on to become one of the highestgrossing movies of all time and earned her the first of seven Oscar nominations, Winslet was just starting to create ripples of interest with her performances in Heavenly Creatures and Sense and Sensibility. But her portrayal of socialite Rose DeWitt Bukater opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, with whom she still shares an unbreakable bond, in the ill-fated love story caused a tsunami of interest in the then-naive
21-year-old.
In an instant, her life changed and the bullies returned in the form of the British tabloids. Looking back over the coverage recently, Winslet says she became distressed at how “unbelievably brutal and cruel’’ the press were to her. “I was so staggered … how had I coped when I was subjected to such really, truly, unkind, painful, public ridiculing for how I looked,’’ she told America’s NPR.
THE GREATEST ROLE
After Titanic, Winslet did the unexpected, shunning the obvious big roles with their bigger salaries. Instead she retreated to indie films and smaller roles, in part for selfpreservation and also to continue developing her acting skills. It proved to be a wise decision, not just for ensuring her career would have longevity but also for her personal life. On the set of 1997’s Hideous Kinky, she met then-assistant director Jim Threapleton, married him the following year and gave birth to their daughter Mia in 2000.
A mum at just 25, Winslet vowed her career would now come second and embraced a more carefree attitude to her relationship with elements of the media and how she was viewed. “All of that kind of stuff kind of evaporated in terms of feeling watched and whether I cared about it,’’ she told WTF magazine. “It just all kind of went away. My focus was my child and that was all that mattered.’’
The self-described “mess’’ of a marriage to Threapleton was short-lived, ending in divorce in 2001. Soon afterwards she met director Sam Mendes and during their eight-year marriage, which ended in divorce in 2011 amid rumours he’d had an affair with another actress, they had a son, Joe.
Fate would bring the award-winning actress together with her third and current husband, Edward Abel Smith, 43, with whom she also has a 7-year-old son, Bear.
Winslet was holidaying on Richard Branson’s estate on Necker Island when a catastrophic fire broke out on the property and she met his nephew, then known as “Ned Rocknroll”. “My husband and I met in a house fire basically,” she told talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in 2014.
Married in 2012, Winslet still swoons over her beau, whom she affectionately calls Neddy, describing him as an “absolutely extraordinary life partner’’. “He’s the superhot, superhuman, stay-at-home dad,” she told The New York Times. “He looks after us, especially me.’’
MISSING MARE
With a few mementos from the set – a sign from Easttown’s police station, her police badge and coat – Winslet says she’s mourning the loss of Mare, but offers hope we may not have seen the last of her.
“I miss playing her,” she told The Watch podcast. “It’s crazy. I wrote to [show creator] Brad Ingelsby the other day and said, ‘Oh my God, I think I really miss Mare, what are we going to do?’ … I kept her barn jacket; it’s on a hook in the house and the other day I put it on and I just sat on the couch and my 17-year-old son [Joe] was like, ‘OK, you’re scaring me now.’
“I’m much more like Mare of Easttown than any of the characters I’ve ever played in any period films – fact. My mouth is almost as filthy as Mare’s, actually possibly even slightly more so. And I’m no stranger to a bottle of beer – newsflash. You wouldn’t think that of me. You’d think that I was like some little dainty champagne sipper. No, I’m chips, cheese and beer, believe me.’’
Mare of Easttown is available to stream on Binge