Actress
Born Kate Elizabeth Winslet on
Oct. 5,
1975
in
Reading, Berkshire, England, United Kingdom
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born into a theater family, including her actor parents, Sally and Roger Winslet, and her maternal grandparents, who founded a local repertory theater. She took an interest in acting at an early age, and her first professional job was appearing in a cereal commercial as a child. She would go on to appear on the TV series "Shrinks," "Get Back" and "Dark Season," and in stage productions such as "Adrian Mole" and "Peter Pan."
Winslet landed her debut film role in director Peter Jackson's 1994 film "Heavenly Creatures," playing a schoolgirl suffering from tuberculosis who forms an obsessive friendship with a classmate. She earned an Academy Award nomination for supporting actress for her next film, Ang Lee's adaptation of the Jane Austen novel "Sense and Sensibility," which also starred Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman.
After starring in "Jude" and "Hamlet," Winslet had her big break playing Rose DeWitt, the heroine of James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster romance "Titanic," opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. The film won numerous Academy Awards, including best picture, and though Winslet didn't win for lead actress, she became the youngest actress to be nominated for two Academy Awards.
Winslet also earned Oscar nominations for her work in "Iris" in 2001, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" in 2004 and "Little Children" in 2006. She finally claimed an Oscar statue for her lead performance as Hanna Schmitz, a woman with a Nazi past, in Stephen Daldry's 2008 drama "The Reader."
In addition to her Oscar, Winslet has won a Grammy for best spoken-word album for children for "Listen to the Storyteller" 2000 and an Emmy for lead actress in a miniseries or movie for "Mildred Pierce" 2010, leaving her a Tony Award shy of being an EGOT a person who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.
Other films of Winslet's include "Revolutionary Road," "Carnage," "Contagion" and Labor Day."
In 2013, Winslet was honored as a Commander of the British Empire. Winslet is married to Ned Rocknroll, a nephew of Richard Branson. The two wed in December 2012 and gave birth to a son, Bear Blaze Winslet, a year later. Winslet also has a daughter, Mia, and son, Joe, with previous husbands Jim Threapleton and Sam Mendes, respectively.
— Oliver Gettell for the Los Angeles Times March 17, 2014
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