''The Accidental Icon''

Kate Winslet, Britain's ultimate glamour girl, gives us her unique take on love, babies and manicures.

By Chrissy Iley

She's fresh out of the shower, her hair still wet, her cheeks the kind of pink that comes from a good scrubbing and hot steam. She's wearing battered Levi's and a T-shirt. She's accessorised only by her baby, Mia, who she arranges on her big old kitchen table. Although she says 'fire away' like she's ready for action, she can't really look at me; she can't take her eyes off Mia, who promptly fills her nappy.

It's hard to believe this super-scrubbed, super-capable, shiny new mum is the same Kate Winslet who played all those barmy chicks who like to swoon, murder, take their clothes off, stand up and pee on Harvey Keitel as she did in Holy Smoke, heave about while drowning in Titanic, risk her life in a lunatic asylum as the muse of the Marquis de Sade in Quills, dash about as Juliet Hulme in big white knickers and murder her friend's mother in Heavenly Creatures or almost die from unrequited love as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility.

In fact, she says the character she feels closest to is "a combination of Marianne Dashwood and Juliet Hulme. Those girls just walk out of the door and grace the elements. They're constantly searching for answers to themselves. You know," there's a pause, "it's not that I'm still searching for those answers, because I've got them now. I've got Mia and I've got Jim, and I know who I am. But when I was playing those roles I was on a desperate hunt for the answers to my life, who I was and what was going to happen to me."

She met her husband, Jim Threapleton, on the set of Hideous Kinky, where he was the third assistant director. It was the small-budget back-to-roots movie she'd decided to do as an antidote to Titanic, where she'd felt drowned, not by the gallons of water, but by the super-budget, relentless experience of being turned from an actor into a celebrity. She found herself in the desert in Morocco, hoping to be a single girl with no worries, not concerned with anything as esoteric as 'finding herself', when instead she found Jim. "And it was, 'Oh, I'm going to spend the rest of my life with you,' straight away. Absolutely. I was really annoyed about it."

Why? Because you thought you hadn't had enough other relationships? "No. I was going to Morocco to work hard and have fun in the sun. I wasn't going there to get involved. I made the decision, I'm a single woman looking after me, and the second bloody week after I got there..." Typical, whenever you're not looking, that's when you find someone. "I suppose so. Anyway, I arrived and saw this rather glorious-looking blond boy with fantastic blue eyes, and I just went, 'Shit', because I knew that was it and there was nothing either of us could do about it. And that proved to be true - we got married a year later."

In typical Winslet fashion, their wedding reception was in a pub near Reading, the menu was famously bangers and mash followed by Bakewell tart and custard and OK! was not invited.

Was she always so solid and sure about her men? "No. Jim is the only time I've ever thought, 'Oh, this is forever.' I'd been in one long relationship for four and a half years with Stephen Tredre, who died of cancer just after I met Jim."

Do you think that intensified your relationship with Jim? "No. But he was fantastically supportive and understanding. Stephen and I had been apart for a year, but we remained incredibly close, and I was still a big part of the battle he was fighting."

An interesting twist of fate came when his funeral was scheduled for the same day as the Titanic premiere in Hollywood. There was no question of which event would take precedence. "People said, 'Don't you think Stephen would have wanted you to go? It could be the most important moment of your career.' But I said 'No, I don't. Party on his grave? Are you kidding?' There was no way I would celebrate the success of something I had done when Stephen had died."

This sane and focused approach to fame sets her apart from her contemporaries. She says she would never live in Hollywood, but that doesn't mean she's not dazzlingly ambitious. Nor does she moan about the actress-juggling-motherhood thing; she's just all about getting on with it.

"Just because I've had a baby, I don't feel I've been 'reborn'. I feel the same, I've just got Mia. It's as if she's always been here. But I could never have anticipated the power of giving birth. My friends said, 'Aren't you nervous?' But I was like, 'No, I'm bloody excited!'"

Mia was ten days late, which was excruciating. "I ended up painting three rooms in the house because I just had to do something. I couldn't read because I'd completely lost my mind. I still haven't got it back!"

Kate laughs and says she doesn't care about that now, because at least she's got something else to focus on. When Mia naps in the afternoon, she reads scripts - she's planning to be back at work within weeks, and is searching for exactly the right project.

She whips Mia off to change her nappy, and when she comes back Mia's hungry, so she begins to feed her. Normally I'm squeamish about that sort of thing, but because it was Kate it seemed pretty normal. She's such an eclectic mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary.

She says all her friends are 'normal' people. Her best friend works for a finance company, apart from Emma Thompson she has no celebrity mates, and she's only been out once since Mia was born.

Instead, she says, she stays at home and cooks every night, and I believe her - there are a million cookbooks from every corner of the planet stuffed in the bookcase. Apparently, Jim's favourite meals are comforting winter stews and soups - cosy food.

"The thing is, I really do fancy Jim. I fancy him every day. I look at him and say, 'You're damn sexy. How come I ended up with such a fantastically sexy boy?' At the photo shoot yesterday Jim's mum was helping me with Mia and people came up to her and said, 'Can I just compliment you on an utterly gorgeous son.' No one said, 'What a beautiful baby'!"

But Mia is beautiful. Kate says she knew she'd got pregnant on holiday in Fiji because when she was traveling back home she started to throw up every two minutes and smoking cigarettes made her feel nauseous, which is pretty convenient. Isn't she addicted to anything? "Fresh air. That makes me sound disgusting. Don't say that." But she can't think of anything else, although when she was younger it was chocolate. But she doesn't want to get into a chocolate-eating conversation, because she doesn't want to be made angry by the way the tabloids scrutinise her weight and the size of her bum.

For the record, her final word on the matter is that you don't have to be pipe-cleaner thin to be sexy, and Hollywood's obsession with shrinking actresses makes their roles seem less charismatic. And that's why we root for Kate. The fact that she doesn't adhere to current Hollywood body stereotypes and that she doesn't try to be someone she isn't is the essence of what makes her sexy.

Is there any particular way that Jim finds you irresistible? "Yes, first thing in the morning, when I haven't got any clothes on. Sexy to him is earthiness. He can't stand any plastic surgery. To him, there's nothing more beautiful than a woman growing old naturally. He's a bit of a rare bird, my boy.

"We were in India when I was shooting Holy Smoke, and there was this woman, one of the film crew. She was very curvy and had two kids. I said to Jim, 'Don't you think she's sexy?' And he said, 'Yes, but she's got motherhood on her side, so she would be.' And I thought, 'I'm marrying you, that's it!'"

Some men find pregnancy a turn-on, some are horrified that their lithe, dinky little babe has a big bump. "Jim thought it was a miracle. He can't stand that I haven't got this great big bump any more. When I'd just had Mia I still had a kind of floppy potbelly, and he even loved that. 'Oh my little potbelly,'" she mimics. "Now it's gone, he's bereft. He's one in a million."

Actually, that's not true. Nearly every man I know finds Kate hot because she's so natural, and women feel championed by her. I put this to her, and ask her if she's flattered or surprised that she's the icon of British glamour? "It's lovely, but it makes me laugh. If I had to define glamour, it would be Marlene Dietrich. Her glamour was so physical. That's what I find glamourous in women. Not the way they are, but the atmosphere they give off, what they generate. It's not so much about their hair and make-up, but their charisma."

I ask her what her favourite shop is. Kate answers "Waitrose". And she means it. I have to tell her I mean clothes shops, and she thinks really hard before finally remembering: "I do love Alexander McQueen, because his clothes are so daring, pieces of art. And Donna Karan, because she takes care of you."

The same goes for make-up. Even though she's got two friends who are make-up artists, she says she doesn't know what to do with eye shadow. Her only routine is Clinique moisturiser, Nars foundation and a coat of Clinique mascara.

"I'll tell you what made me furious once. They were talking about hand cream in a magazine and this article said, 'Manicure-addict Kate Winslet'. Manicure? I'm sorry!" She says this as if a manicure were some kind of 18th-century torture given by the Marquis de Sade.

I wonder if there's anything she's not grounded about? Does she ever have any worries about life? "I worry about Mia's future. The role I'll have to play for her for the rest of her life. I panic that I won't get it right. I panic whenever I walk into a job that I'm going to screw it up. I panic that I'm a fake and everyone's going to find out."

But there's absolutely nothing fake about her. She says what she wants. She knows who she is. She wants to work hard, enjoy herself, have three children and stay besotted with Jim, which to me doesn't seem like much of an effort.

Somehow we're back on to Jim, and Kate's eyes actually widen when she talks about him. What's the most romantic thing he's ever done? "I was filming Enigma in Amsterdam (out later this year), and Jim had gone surfing in Portugal with a friend. It was a Sunday afternoon and he was arriving back in England. He called me as he got off the plane and I told him I was having lunch. He said, 'I'm just getting in the car to drive home. I'll ring you when I get to the house.' Ten minutes later he appeared at the restaurant. All through the conversation he was finding his way to the restaurant in a taxi. I nearly fainted. It was the best, most romantic thing anyone's ever done."

It seems to me poetic, glamourous and just the kind of thing that happens when you find what you've really been looking for.

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