Kate Winslet was born on October 5, 1975 in Reading, England. She was born to a family that had acting in their blood and that each one of them practiced. Both of her grandparents were theatre managers and her parents were actors.
Born into a family of thespians–parents Roger
and Sally were both stage actors, maternal grandparents
Oliver and Linda Bridges ran the
Reading Repertory Theatre, and uncle Robert Bridges
was a fixture in London’s West End theatre district–Kate
came into her talent at an early age. She scored her first professional
gig at 11, dancing opposite the Honey
Monster in a commercial for a kids’ cereal. She
started acting lessons around the same time, which led to formal
training at a performing arts high school. Over the next few years
she appeared on stage regularly and landed a few bit parts in sitcoms.
Her first big break came at age 17, when she was cast as an obsessive
adolescent in Heavenly Creatures (1994).
The film, based on the true story of two fantasy-gripped girls who
commit a brutal murder, received modest distribution but was roundly
praised by critics.
Still a relative unknown, Winslet
attended a cattle call audition the next year for Ang Lee’s Sense
and Sensibility (1995). She made an immediate impression
on the film’s star, Emma Thompson, and beat out more than
a hundred other hopefuls for the part of plucky Marianne Dashwood.
Her efforts were rewarded with both a British
Academy Award and an Oscar
nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Winslet
followed up with two more period pieces, playing the rebellious
heroine in Jude (1996)
and Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet
(1996).
The role that transformed Winslet
from art house attraction to international star was Rose DeWitt
Bukater, the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat in James Cameron’s
Titanic (1997). Young
girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet,
swooning over all that face time opposite heartthrob Leonardo
DiCaprio and noting her refreshingly healthy, un-emaciated
physique. Winslet’s
performance also garnered a Best Actress
nomination, making her the youngest actress to ever
receive two Academy nods.
After the swell of unexpected attention surrounding Titanic
(1997), Winslet
was eager to retreat into independent projects. Rumor has it that
she turned down the lead roles in both Shakespeare in Love (1998)
and Anna and the King (1999) in order to play adventurous
soul searchers in Hideous Kinky (1998)
and Holy Smoke (1999).
The former cast her as a young single mother traveling through 1960s
Morocco with her daughters in tow; the latter, as a zealous follower
of a guru tricked into a “deprogramming” session in the
Australian outback. The next year found her back in period dress
as the Marquis de Sade’s
chambermaid and accomplice in Quills
(2000).
Off camera, Winslet
is known for her mischievous pranks and familial devotion. She has
two sisters, Anna Winslet and Beth Winslet
(both actresses), and a brother, Joss. In 1998
she married James Threapleton, whom she met on
the set of Hideous Kinky (1998); the pair had a daughter, Mia,
in October of 2000.
