Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born October 5, 1975) is a five-time Academy Award-nominated, Emmy Award-nominated, BAFTA, Grammy and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning British actress.
She is noted for having played a wide range of diverse characters over her career, but is probably best-known for her critically acclaimed performances as Juliet Hulme in Heavenly Creatures (1994), Rose DeWitt Bukater in the highest-grossing film of all time, Titanic (1997), and Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
She is the winner of a BAFTA and SAG Award, and a five-time Oscar nominee. At the age of 22, she broke the record for the youngest person to receive two Oscar nominations, and each of her subsequent nominations has broken a further record: the youngest person to receive three, four, and five nominations.
Early life
Kate Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, England 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. Most of the people in her family are actors, so her continuing the time-honored tradition was perhaps a natural progression.
Kate Winslet, raised as an Anglican, began studying drama at the age of eleven at the Redroofs Theatre School,[1] a co-educational independent school in Maidenhead, Berkshire, where she was head girl and was soon cast as a spokesperson for a cereal in television commercials. Although she seems to be living an almost idealistic existence, it wasn't always that way. Throughout her adolescence, she was severely bullied for being overweight and having exceptionally large feet (which she inherited from her mother).
Career
Kate Winslet's career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children's science fiction serial Dark Season in 1991. This was 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.
Kate Winslet film career took off with praise and recognition in 1994 when Kate Winslet starred in a joint leading role, as Juliet Hulme in director Peter Jackson's critically acclaimed Heavenly Creatures, playing a vivacious and imaginative teen who helps her best friend murder her mother when they are not allowed to be together.
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, a massive hit which holds the record as highest-grossing film in history (not accounting for inflation) at more than 1 billion dollars in box-office worldwide. It went on to win 11 Academy Awards.
Kate Winslet has been regarded as something of a critics' darling, generally receiving positive reviews for every one of her films. Despite Titanic's success, she has continued making lower-budget, independent films, including Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke!; her roles in these smaller, more artistic films appear to be one of choice - 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, Titanic and Finding Neverland. (For a time, she was given the nickname "Corset Kate").
