Life Story

		Biography
		Film and Career
		Awards & Nominations

Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born October 5, 1975) is an Academy Award-nominated English actress. She is noted for having played a wide range of diverse characters over her career, though her best known role may be that of Rose DeWitt Bukater in the highest-grossing film of all time, Titanic (1997).

Although Winslet has not won an Academy Award, she has been highly favoured by the Academy, and holds the record for the youngest person to receive two Oscar nominations, as well as the record for the most Oscar nominations of any actor before the age of 30 (having received a total of four nominations by that age).

Early life: Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire to Roger Winslet and Sally Bridges, both of whom were actors. Her maternal grandparents, Oliver and Linda Bridges, founded and operated the Reading Repertory, and her uncle, Robert Bridges, appeared in the original West End production of Oliver! Her sisters are Beth Winslet and Anna Winslet, also actresses.

Winslet, raised an Anglican, began studying drama at the age of eleven, and was soon cast as a spokesperson for a cereal in television commercials.

Career: Winslet's career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children's science-fiction serial Dark Season in 1991, followed by appearances in the made-for-tv movie Anglo-Saxon Attitudes in 1992 and an episode of the medical drama Casualty in 1993, also for the BBC.

Winslet's film career took off in 1994 when she starred in her first leading role, as Juliet Hulme in director Peter Jackson's critically acclaimed Heavenly Creatures. This role was followed by the successful film Sense and Sensibility (co-starring Emma Thompson), which made her well-known, especially in the UK. Winslet became famous world-wide after the 1997 release of Titanic, which was the most expensive film of all time, and became the highest-grossing film of all time after several months in release, grossing $600 million at the United States box office.

Winslet has since become regarded as something of a critics' darling, having received generally positive reviews for every one of her films. Despite Titanic's success, Winslet has continued making lower-budget films, including Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke; her roles in smaller, more artistic films appears to be one of choice, as she turned down the lead in Shakespeare in Love to make Hideous Kinky. 

She has also taken several roles in studio "period drama"s like Quills, Iris and Finding Neverland. For a time, she became associated with such films and given the nickname "Corset Kate". Winslet has most recently appeared in several American films, including the well-reviewed quirky comedy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the dramatic thriller The Life of David Gale.

Winslet has also enjoyed a brief taste of success as a singer, with her single "What If" from soundtrack of Christmas Carol: The Movie, which reached #1 in Ireland and #6 in the UK. More recently, she participated in a duet with singer "Weird Al" Yankovic on the Sandra Boynton CD, Dog Train, and sang in the 2006 film, Romance and Cigarettes.

In 2005, Winslet appeared in a television commercial for the American Express credit card. As part of the "My Life, My Card" campaign, the ad shows Winslet visiting shops in London as she makes references to all the events that have happened to her film characters - such as going to prison for murder (Heavenly Creatures), almost drowning (Titanic), and having her memory erased (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). During the ad, she is shown holding items relating to her films; during the reference to Sense and Sensibility she thumbs through a copy of the book, and when she references Finding Neverland, she's holding a hook.

In February 2006, Winslet announced that she will collaborate with her husband, director Sam Mendes, on a film version of the Richard Yates novel, Revolutionary Road.

Personal life: On November 22, 1998, Winslet married director Jim Threapleton. The two have a daughter, Mia Honey, who was born on October 12, 2000. After a divorce in 2001, Winslet began a relationship with director Sam Mendes, whom she married on May 24, 2003, on the island of Anguilla in the West Indies. Their son, Joe Alfie, was born on December 22, 2003.

The media, particularly in England, have enthusiastically documented her weight fluctuations over the years. Winslet 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.

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

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors, This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Kate Winslet".

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