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Kate Elizabeth Winslet (; born 5 October 1975) is an English actress. Known for her work in independent films, particularly period dramas, and for her portrayals of headstrong and complicated women, she has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. ''Time'' magazine named Winslet one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009 and 2021. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2012.

Winslet studied drama at the Redroofs Theatre School. Her first screen appearance, at age 15, was in the British television series ''Dark Season'' (1991). She made her film debut playing a teenage murderess in ''Heavenly Creatures'' (1994), and went on to win a BAFTA Award for playing Marianne Dashwood in ''Sense and Sensibility'' (1995). Global stardom followed with her leading role in the epic romance ''Titanic'' (1997), which was the highest-grossing film at the time. Winslet then eschewed parts in blockbusters in favour of critically acclaimed period pieces, including '' Quills'' (2000) and ''Iris'' (2001).

The science fiction romance ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' (2004), in which Winslet was cast against type in a contemporary setting, proved to be a turning point in her career, and she gained further recognition for her performances in '' Finding Neverland'' (2004), '' Little Children'' (2006), ''Revolutionary Road'' (2008), and ''The Reader'' (2008). For playing a former Nazi camp guard in the latter, she won the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress. Winslet's portrayal of Joanna Hoffman in the biopic ''Steve Jobs'' (2015) won her another BAFTA Award, and she received two Primetime Emmy Awards for her performances in the HBO miniseries ''Mildred Pierce'' (2011) and ''Mare of Easttown'' (2021).

For her narration of a short story in the audiobook ''Listen to the Storyteller'' (1999), Winslet won a Grammy Award. She performed the song "What If" for the soundtrack of her film '' Christmas Carol: The Movie'' (2001). A co-founder of the charity Golden Hat Foundation, which aims to create autism awareness, Winslet has written a book on the topic. Divorced from film directors Jim Threapleton and Sam Mendes, Winslet has been married to businessman Edward Abel Smith since 2012. She has a child from each marriage.

Early life and background

Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born on 5 October 1975, in Reading, Berkshire, to Sally Anne (née Bridges) and Roger John Winslet. She is of British descent, and also has Irish ancestry on her father's side and Swedish ancestry on her mother's side. Her mother worked as a nanny and waitress, and her father, a struggling actor, took labouring jobs to support the family. Her maternal grandparents were both actors and ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company. Winslet has two sisters, Anna and Beth, both of whom are actresses, and a younger brother, Joss. The family had limited financial means; they lived on free meal benefits and were supported by a charity named the Actors' Charitable Trust. When Winslet was ten, her father severely injured his foot in a boating accident and found it harder to work, leading to more financial hardships for the family. Winslet has said her parents always made them feel cared for and that they were a supportive family.

Winslet attended St Mary and All Saints' Church of England primary school. Living in a family of actors inspired her to pursue acting from a young age. She and her sisters participated in amateur stage shows at school and at a local youth theatre, named Foundations. When she was five, Winslet made her first stage appearance as Mary in her school's production of the Nativity play. She describes herself as an overweight child, and was called "blubber" by her schoolmates and was bullied for her appearance. She said she did not let this stop her. At eleven, Winslet was accepted into the Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead. The school also functioned as an agency and took students to London to audition for acting jobs. She appeared in a Sugar Puffs commercial and dubbed for foreign films. At school, she was made head girl, took part in productions of ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' and ''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'', and played the lead role of Wendy Darling in ''Peter Pan''. She worked simultaneously with the Starmaker Theatre Company in Reading. She participated in over twenty of their stage productions, but was rarely selected as the lead due to her weight. Nonetheless, she played key roles as Miss Agatha Hannigan in ''Annie'', the Mother Wolf in ''The Jungle Book'', and Lena Marelli in ''Bugsy Malone''.

In 1991, within two weeks of finishing her GCSE examinations, Winslet made her screen debut as one of the main cast members of the BBC science fiction television series ''Dark Season''. Her part was that of Reet, a schoolgirl who helps her classmates fight against a sinister man distributing free computers to her school. She did not earn much from the job and, at age sixteen, lack of funds forced Winslet to leave Redroofs. To support herself, she worked at a delicatessen. In 1992, she had a small part in the television film ''Anglo-Saxon Attitudes'', an adaptation of Angus Wilson's satirical novel. Winslet, who weighed at the time, played the daughter of an obese woman in it. During filming, an off-hand comment from the director Diarmuid Lawrence about the likeness between her and the actress who played her mother prompted Winslet to lose weight. She next took on the role of the young daughter of a bankrupt self-made man (played by Ray Winstone) in the television sitcom ''Get Back'' (1992–1993). She also had a guest role in a 1993 episode of the medical drama series ''Casualty''.

Career

Early work and breakthrough (1994–1996)

Winslet was among 175 girls to audition for Peter Jackson's psychological drama ''Heavenly Creatures'' (1994), and was cast after impressing Jackson with the intensity she brought to her part. The New Zealand-based production is based on the Parker–Hulme murder case of 1954, in which Winslet played Juliet Hulme, a teenager who assists her friend, Pauline Parker (played by Melanie Lynskey), in the murder of Pauline's mother. She prepared for the part by reading the transcripts of the girls' murder trial, their letters and diaries, and interacted with their acquaintances. She has said she learnt tremendously from the job. Jackson filmed in the real murder locations, and the experience left Winslet traumatised. She found it difficult to detach herself from her character, and said that after returning home, she often cried. The film was a critical breakthrough for Winslet; Desson Thomson, a reviewer for ''The Washington Post'', called her "a bright-eyed ball of fire, lighting up every scene she's in". Winslet recorded "Juliet's Aria" for the film's soundtrack. Also that year, she appeared as Geraldine Barclay, a prospective secretary, in the Royal Exchange Theatre production of Joe Orton's farce '' What the Butler Saw''.

While promoting ''Heavenly Creatures'' in Los Angeles, Winslet auditioned for the minor part of Lucy Steele for a 1995 film adaptation of Jane Austen's novel ''Sense and Sensibility'', written by and starring Emma Thompson. Impressed by her reading, Thompson cast her in the much larger part of the recklessly romantic teenager Marianne Dashwood. The director Ang Lee wanted Winslet to play the part with grace and restraintaspects that he felt were missing from her performance in ''Heavenly Creatures''and thus asked her to practise tai chi, read gothic literature, and learn to play the piano. David Parkinson of ''Radio Times'' considered Winslet to be a standout among the cast, and Mick LaSalle of the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' took note of how well she had portrayed her character's growth and maturity. The film grossed over $134 million worldwide. She won the Screen Actors Guild and British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actress, and received nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award in the same category. Also in 1995, Winslet featured in the poorly received Disney film ''A Kid in King Arthur's Court''.

Winslet had roles in two period dramas of 1996'' Jude'' and ''Hamlet''. As with ''Heavenly Creatures'', her roles in these films were those of women with a "mad edge". In Michael Winterbottom's ''Jude'', based on the novel ''Jude the Obscure'' by Thomas Hardy, she played Sue Bridehead, a young woman with suffragette leanings who falls in love with her cousin, Jude (played by Christopher Eccleston). The critic Roger Ebert believed the part allowed Winslet to display her acting range, and praised her for the defiance she brought to the role. After unsuccessfully auditioning for Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film '' Mary Shelley's Frankenstein'', she was cast for the part of Ophelia, the doomed lover of the title character, in Branagh's adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy ''Hamlet