Kate Winslet

Biography

Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born October 5, 1975 in Reading, Berkshire, England) is an English actress most famous for her role of Rose DeWitt Bukater in the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic.

Her career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children's science-fiction serial Dark Season in 1991, followed by an appearance in an episode of the medical drama Casualty in 1993, also for the BBC.

Winslet's film career took off in 1994 when she performed her first leading role as Juliet Hulme in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. Since then she has acted in several films, such as Sense and Sensibility, Titanic, Iris, Finding Neverland, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, earning her four Oscar nominations and four Golden Globes.

Kate Winslet has also enjoyed a brief taste of success as a singer, with her single "What If" from the Christmas Carol: The Movie soundtrack.

On November 22, 1998 Winslet married director Jim Threapleton with whom she has a daughter named Mia Honey. After her divorce in 2001, she began a relationship with director Sam Mendes. Winslet married Mendes on May 24, 2003 on the island of Anguilla in the West Indies and their son Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes was born on December 22, 2003.

On January 25, 2005 Winslet was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She eventually lost to Hilary Swank. This tied her for the record for most Academy Award nominations for an actress before the age of 30. This nomination was preceded by nominations for Best Supporting Actress in Sense and Sensibility and Iris. Winslet was also nominated for Best Actress in Titanic, but lost to Helen Hunt. She was also nominated for a BAFTA for Best Actress in that film and in Finding Neverland, but lost to Imelda Staunton.

Her home town of Reading has named a street - Winslet Place - in her honour, built on the site of a demolished cinema.

Winslet is famous for her curvaceous figure, and the media, in England in particular, have enthusiastically documented her weight fluctuations over the years. Winslet, a former anorexic, has been outspoken about her refusal to lose weight in order to conform to the Hollywood "ideal". In February 2003, the British edition of GQ magazine published photographs of Winslet which had been airbrushed to make her look dramatically thinner than she really was; Winslet issued a statement saying that the alterations were made without her consent.