"Madame Kate"

At 22 she was the most bankable woman in film. Then she went art house. But why is Kate Winslet still keeping her distance from Hollywood? By Marianne Gray

When Kate Winslet admitted she was dieting to lose ''a bit of baby weight'' it was as if Germaine Greer had announced, after everything, she was to get hitched - and pushing her fiance live on the evening news to prove the point. Because Winslet, the voluptuous star of Titanic and Holy Smoke was a lone Marilyn Monroe in Hollywood's contemporary Twiggy set.

But that's off screen: when it comes to getting work as a female film actor it seems one can never be too thin. Hence the diet. The anguish this caused Winslet, after years of media interest in her refusal to downsize, is clear. She set herself apart from the Flockharts and Paltrows by apologising for her conformity. ''I despise myself for it and feel I'm letting a lot of people down,'' she said. ''I constantly wave the flag of 'don't go on diets because they are rubbish'. What annoys me most is that the more terribly thin and fit we actresses become, the less real the films become, which is sad.''

Winslet was never thin but then she didn't need to be in a run of corset films, set back at a time when even film-makers recognised women weren't all a size six. There's Winslet as Marianne Dashwood in the adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Ophelia to Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, and steaming up windows with Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, the biggest-budget movie ever - and the only film in history to take more than US$1 billion at the box office.

But then Winslet wanted out. Suddenly the most bankable female in film, the 22-year-old rejected the next blockbuster. She settled on two art house flicks, Hideous Kinky (1998) and the Jane Campion-directed Holy Smoke (1999), which took her to India and Australia in kaftans and sarongs instead of bone and lace. ''After Titanic I made a decision to do something smaller,'' she has explained. ''I needed to remind myself I was doing this job for a reason: because I love it. I could have done a lot of big films, raked in the cash and forgotten that it's not about being a film star, but trying to do good work.''

It turned out to be a good choice. Not only is she happier working on projects she likes, but she also met her husband, Jim Threapleton, on the set of Hideous Kinky, marrying him in November 1998. He was assistant director; she was the star - and it was love at first sight. ''My reaction was, oh no,'' she said. ''Because I saw this wonderful person, and I just knew that something was going to happen.'' He turned his back as soon as he saw her, for much the same reason: something was going to happen between them and he didn't want her to see his shock.

Since their marriage, she has spoken of her desire to tone down her many nude scenes. ''Everyone always asks me about nudity because I guess I've taken my clothes off in almost every movie I've done,'' she told The New York Times last November. ''But, in each case, the nudity has been there for a reason. Frankly, I hate every second. But I can't stand seeing a film and thinking: 'Why is that woman having sex in all her clothes? She should be naked'.''

She railed against ''gratuitous'' sex scenes which she wouldn't ''stand for'' just when she announced she had taken on a role in Quills as a washerwoman seduced by the Marquis de Sade, the amazingly complex figure whose perverse ideas were brilliantly written. As expected, the film involves underage sex and necrophilia, heaving cleavage and double entendres.

Set in the early 19^th Century, Quills depicts the last days of the Marquis de Sade imprisoned in Charenton asylum. While it's true that de Sade was imprisoned on and off for crimes including sexual deviancy, Quills film plays fast and loose with historical facts. However it has attracted critical praise for being ''a vigorous anti-censorship treatise''. Winslet stars opposite Geoffrey Rush, who turns in a strong performance as the Marquis - all quivering with evil and elegance. Joaquin Phoenix as the innocent asylum overseer Abbe de Coulmier, and Michael Caine's cruel Dr. Royer-Collard, sent in to cure the ''perverted' de Sade. It's a complex bunch of characters and director Philip Kaufman has said that Winslet's Madeleine ''is the most noble, lease neurotic character in the whole piece.''

Madeleine loves de Sade's writings, which provide her with entertainment in a dark, repressed world, although the actress herself didn't find them so enlightening - she found them ''downright embarrassing''.

''Madeleine is a girl who admires and respects the Marquis as a fiercely intelligent man and knows he can't change her views on right and wrong,'' explains Winslet. ''But she isn't in love with him. The man she's really in love with is the Abbe, Joaquin's character. That's the real reason she won't leave the asylum, no matter what danger she might face by remaining there.''

She's buxom and rosy-cheeked, fair bursting out of her clothes, the picture of innocence (and what better audience for perversion?). Far from a literal study of depravity, the film presents the story of de Sade as one of censorship in society and how censors often have values just as ''perverse'' as those they seek to ban. It's a character study serving as a meditation on free speech.

Winslet was the first major talent to commit to the film, giving director Philip Kaufman the clout to get the rest of his stars. ''Kate has the proper hierarchy of values,'' he explains. ''She has none of that movie-star stuff at all, which shouldn't be unusual, but is. Everyone else is busy being piggies, but Kate rejects all that. She is unafraid. She looks soft, but she's not fragile. At all.''

And she's praised by her co-star, Phoenix, for her presence of mind in a, shall we say, rather unusual love scene between the two. ''Acting out a love scene is never easy,'' he says. ''I think she was nervous, but didn't show it. I was scared, but she led me like a little lamb, even though the scene wasn't meant to be gentle. She's a great actress… [the film] was like having a masterclass. There's Michael Caine, Geoffrey Rush and Kate Winslet, and you just observe everything they do.''

Winslet was born to act. One of four and brought up in a small rented terrace in the shadow of the soccer club on a main road in Reading near London, she is now the most famous member of the thespian clan. Her grandparents, Oliver and Linda Bridges, ran the Reading Repertory Company. Her father Roger and sisters Beth and Anna are actors. Her father's aunts were in a vaudeville troupe and her uncle, the late Robert Bridges, was known better as Mr. Bumble in the West End run of Oliver!

Upon meeting her, she is thoroughly modern and effortlessly down to earth. She talks rapidly but doesn't waffle, saying it like it is, as if she's known you for years. Her mouth dominates her perennially expressive face and moves as though it was savouring some succulent piece of fruit.

''In our house there was always lots of singing and putting on plays and tap dancing in the kitchen,'' she remembers. ''We always went to see Dad's plays. He was like the majority of actors: often out of work or doing tiny parts. We never had a wealthy lifestyle and I am grateful for that. It was totally normal, sharing bedrooms, not getting a clothes allowance, simple holidays. We were really happy and still are a very close family. We all try to get together on Sundays, if possible, and at Easter, Christmas and on birthdays.

''I have seen enough of the other side of acting - being out of work and waiting for the phone to ring - to appreciate everything. I learnt early on that luck has a bigger part to play than talent. Coming from an acting family has meant they have been really brilliant about my career. They never actually encouraged me but nor did they ever discourage me. We all made our own way, went down our own paths and made our own mistakes.

''I remember the exact moment I knew I wanted to act. It was at home sitting in the downstairs loo. I was eight… I'm one of those inexhaustible people. I've always been fired up about acting. I have endless energy and need little sleep. I just take a deep breath and do it. I'm a bit of a control freak. I've never done any drugs and I'm sure I never will because I hate the idea of not being in control.''

At 11 her slightly reluctant father let her go to a children's theater school in Maidenhead. Her grandparents funded her until she could pay her own way which started aged 12 when she got $400 for a breakfast cereal commercial. Her first movie was A Kid In King Arthur's Court [oops, incorrect!] and at 18, in Heavenly Creatures, [actually, HC was completed just before she turned 18], playing a young real-life murderer got her noticed. Now she's probably got more money than her whole family put together and says she would like to buy her parents a house. She plants to stay close to home, with her feet firmly on the ground - and for someone who is so grounded, home is where the heart is, not where the jobs are.

''I'm definitely not planning to move to Los Angeles,'' she says. ''It's a weird, spread-out city and a place where absolutely everybody there has something to do with the movie industry. I'd rather have a normal life. I haven't bought into that dream of Hollywood celebrity. The 'glamour thing' of fame, in bits, is fun. I love the successful bits like my two nominations; it's a great thing to have under my belt and nobody can take it away from me. I never thought it would get like this for me. I try to keep it all in the frame by working on interesting, low-budget films being made by friends whenever I can and not telling my agent! I couldn't give a damn if I were in a film that I loved being a part of but was a flop. But as soon as I start making 'the wrong films', ones that make me feel like I wish I wasn't starring in them, I hope I'll back out.''

The corset is a running theme with Winslet. Putting aside the small matter of Titanic for a moment - she's always been happy donning historical garb and treating her roles almost as a lesson in the past. So while she didn't enjoy reading de Sade, she did like framing her character as a woman of her time, while France sorted out its Revolutionary feet.

''I enjoyed much more reading texts about the lives of working-class women in post-Revolutionary France,'' she says, ''I learned about what would have been my character's struggles and strengths in a time when such women were generally invisible to history. I love doing that kind of research. This is a part of the job that comes as a bonus -the research. Less so being cooped up in a corset. I've got the corset to thank for a lot of good things. Ken (Branagh) had seen me in Sense and Sensibility and rang me to ask me if I'd like to don corsets again to be Ophelia. I nearly passed out with excitement,'' she laughs. ''It's an extraordinary thing when the phone rings and something like that happens. It changes your life. I was cutting a pastrami and dill sandwich at the deli I worked in on Primrose Hill [a suburb of North London] when the call came for my so-called 'break-through' film, Heavenly Creatures. I suppose my first concession to 'celebrity' was to get a mobile phone because you never know when that call is going to come through.''

At 25 Kate Winslet has had quite a few life-altering calls. From Hollywood, when she was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (only her third film) and to request her presence as star of Titanic, for which she won a second Oscar nomination. From other places, like Australia from Jane Campion to be in Holy Smoke and Morocco for Hideous Kinky, a film of Esther Freud's '60s novel, where she met Threapleton.

Her agents were, to say the least, less than happy about following Titanic with a small film set in Morocco. She remembers their conversation as follows: ''OK, they said, you're going to ride this enormous wave by making a tiny film in the desert. That's a good idea,'' then once more she stresses she does not want to ''go Hollywood''.

''I didn't want to get lost or confused by the hugeness of Titanic,'' she says. ''I wanted to go to work every day and know everyone's name on the set. It sounds a little mystical, but I had to look after my soul.''

Making Titanic had not been easy. Never mind the rumours coming out of the set - Winslet herself gave an interview while exhausted after six months of filming which sent the studio and director James Cameron into a fury. She told a journalist she had nearly drowned, caught flu and suffered hypothermia. ''I looked like a battered wife,'' she continued. ''Nothing ever felt safe on the set. [And Cameron] has a temper like you wouldn't believe. There were times I was genuinely frightened of him. You'd have to pay me a lot of money to work with Jim again.''

But Winslet handled her own damage control, and handled it well. She wrote to the LA Times, where the interview was printed, saying she had been tired and overwrought when commenting. Refreshingly, she did not claim she was misquoted. She took it on the chin and got on with her life.

She and Threapleton recently bought a US$2M house overlooking the Thames River outside London so that their daughter (Mia Honey Threapleton), born last October, could grow up away from the roar of the city. ''I intend to choose film projects close to home because I want to be a real mother to Mia,'' she asserts. ''She is my most amazing production, absolutely gorgeous, totally precious. She's transformed my life. I've stopped smoking, I'm not so hectic, I'm a softer, calmer, more vulnerable person.

''I've always wanted to be a young mum so I could enjoy my children when I was still young and active, but I do not want to bundle her up in a bag and drag her round film locations with me. When I start work again later this year it is near home, shooting Therese Raquin [her first film as producer] at Shepperton Studios, half an hour from where I live.''

Before then there's the release of Enigma, a World War II thriller about the race to decipher an Axis message and save a fleet of Allied ships. The movie is produced by Mick Jagger - an unusual choice, thought Winslet, until she started working with him. ''I suppose I shouldn't say this,'' says Winslet, before saying it anyway, ''but when I heard about Mick, I thought, huh, wonder why he's so interested in producing films? But he was terrific. And he did something very sweet. He made up compilation CD's of 1940s music for all the cast, which really impressed me. That's just the kind of thing actors like as a way to think themselves into a period. And most executive producers, you think of them sitting in offices, making money decisions. You don't expect them to be hands-on. So Mick impressed me.''

The filming was brought forward two weeks and Winslet's parts were shot first, out of order, so she didn't get too tired or look too pregnant. ''Every day was a day of dread,'' remembers director Michael Apted, ''to see if she'd suddenly exploded.'' An unfortunate choice of words for Winslet. She had always been reassured by her co-stars that she didn't need to fit into the X-ray category of actress. When shooting Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio predicted her body would be talked about. Says Winslet, ''I'd complain to him: 'I'm naked in this movie, and my bum is fat.' And he'd say, 'You'll be hailed for having a great shape'. He'd tell me: 'You're gorgeous. Stop worrying'. And he's a sensible boy.''

Being an actor is a hard job: you're only as good as your last movie. After the constant sniping from the British media, Winslet's sense of self was shaken. Not conforming to accepted standards of beauty can be a lonely task for a star. After the criticism first started, she said: ''At first all that stuff was pretty hurtful. No one has the right to judge like that. Why slag off my physicality? Because actually I want that to be a good thing, I want it to help young people who are completely messed up. It breaks my heart - I get letters from mothers of young girls who were anorexic and no longer are, because they've read articles and things I've said.''

But there's one telling anecdote from the filming of Holy Smoke, told to an Indian journalist, which hints at how much the sniping hurt her. Jane Campion took Winslet to a holy town high on the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh. Campion wanted Winslet to appreciate how Westerners could be hit by the cultural chasm between accepted notions of self and a more communal Eastern model. So she took her to see a guru.

Winslet sat down and immediately felt judged. She had barriers up, she remembers, tried to keep an open mind, but all she could think was that she wasn't the type of person who should be here. She didn't need any help. He took her to the shores of the Ganges, and she said, ''Wow, look at all those lovely fires. What are they burning?'' It was dead bodies. Winslet continues, remembering: ''I just thought, 'This is so f***ing morbid, I've got to go.' The guru had this aura about him that was suffocating. I was in this spiritual bubble and I had to get out of it because I didn't need it. I just thought, 'I know who I am. I am so sorted in my life right now, more than I ever have been, so stop judging me.' I was freaked out. When the guru turned his back to go, I cried and cried, I couldn't believe it. I have never cried so violently in my life. I kept thinking, 'I know who I am, I know who I am, how dare you think that I don't?'''

Now Winslet is back in her home with her husband and her baby, which starts to cry. Winslet picks her up and comforts her. ''You know, I don't really have enormous confidence,'' she says. ''It's all a front, believe me. I have my moments when I cower in a corner and wish the world would swallow me up. But I am determined to be honest. I don't want to be distracted by success. I'd rather listen to my baby scream.''

Thanks, again, to Lorissa for taking the time to scan and share this article with us!