February 24:

The Sydney Morning Herald has a nice feature on Kate today. I've posted the interview on a separate page. Kate discusses her films and tries to clear up the issue of dieting. Here's an excerpt about working with Joaquin Phoenix:

Having just finished Gladiator, Phoenix came to Quills completely exhausted. Winslet, who plays the maid smuggling de Sade's text out of the asylum to which he's been banished, proved a big help. Phoenix takes the part of the asylum's pioneering abbe who advocates a libertine approach to mental illness. He recalled: "I'm standing there with the crew at 10 o'clock at night saying, 'I'm not coming back tomorrow, there's no way I can do this', and Kate's asking if she can bring me some tea. She's bringing tea and biscuits for everyone, throwing parties, she's just a really considerate woman. And you can see that in her acting. She's very giving. There's a great warmth about her." "It was my project to get Joaquin through the film," Winslet admitted, "because he was very tired and he was playing the hardest role of all of us."

Tomorrow evening the BAFTA ceremony takes place. Here's more info on the event and broadcast:

The Orange British Academy Film Awards, hosted by Stephen Fry with Mariella Frostrup, will be held on Feb. 25, 2001 at The Odeon Leicester Square in central London. They will be broadcast live on Sky One at 6:45pm U.K. (GMT) with a highlights programme the following evening on BBC1 at 10:35pm (GMT). Presenters will include Goldie Hawn, Elton John, Robert Altman, Christina Ricci, Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant, Roger Moore, Thandie Newton, Rachel Weisz, Annette Bening and Dame Maggie Smith.

Quills has received the following nominations: Best Actor, Production Design, Costume Design, Make-up/Hair.

February 23:

I have read a couple of stories in the past few days about celebrities who are planning on attending the BAFTA ceremony and pre-awards party, but found no mention of Kate. (The head of BAFTA supposedly said recently that Kate was scheduled to attend the awards ceremony.) Will she? Perhaps we won't know until Sunday, when the ceremony takes place...

The distribution of a baby photograph by a new celeb mom in the UK has generated more commentary about 'celebrity':

''Do You Get The Picture?'' by Linda Watson-Brown

     The fact that we are so dependent on the experiences of untouchable others in order to provide some sort of connection in an anonymous world leads to ludicrous responses. When Kate Winslet had a down-to-earth wedding with readily available pictures, she was treated like an angel fallen to earth. By the time she posed freely with baby Mia some months later, she was deified. It was considered amazingly newsworthy that a celebrity should be so giving with her personal moments. It was reported as an indicator of unspoiled perfection that she should not engage herself in the usual Garboesque manoeuvres which result in the paparazzi scramble, and editors crowing about their best shots…

     The oxygen of publicity is vital for stars. The current trend to produce images that grasp at classic, timeless grace is only one more indicator of the dawning realisation that nothing is new. The engraved images we all have in our minds of iconic women are rarely full-colour. Whether it is Marilyn Monroe in a windswept white dress, Eva Peron appealing to the people of Argentina, or Diana Spencer on the front cover of Vogue after her separation, there is more power when an image is not tarnished by garish illustration. Fashion photographers have always known this, and today's celebrities are little more than victims of a new phase stolen from an old era.

''Celebrity Posers,'' by Kate Ginn:

     Having a baby poses a big dilemma for most celebrity parents. They have to choose a name and decide just how their little one will make its public debut. Different stars have opted for different ways to introduce their new arrival to the world. For those who can't resist the allure of money, there's the celebrity magazine route. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas are among famous parents who have cashed in. The couple were paid pounds 600,000 by OK! for exclusive photos with newborn son Dylan.

     The same magazine parted with another six-figure sum to secure the fiercely contested rights to present Brooklyn Beckham with his proud parents. Before that, there had been the merest glimpse of Baby Beckham in his pram to satisfy the public's insatiable curiosity. Mick Jagger's mistress Luciana Morad was paid for a shoot with son Lucas. Men Behaving Badly star Caroline Quentin posed with baby Emily Rose for Pounds 200,000.

     Some celebrities refuse to cash in, however. Actress Kate Winslet, 25, turned down a deal worth up to Pounds 500,000 with a glossy magazine to sell the first pictures of daughter Mia, pictured top right, born in October last year. Instead, Winslet and husband Jim Threapleton released a photograph of five-day-old Mia free to the media. Winslet's friend Emma Thompson also rejected offers to appear with her daughter, Gaia.

''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.''

Thanks also to Sylvia for notifying me of this article about the American Film Market published in today's Variety. Enigma was screened there yesterday, and screens again today.

This year, buyers and sellers attending the 21st AFM, which runs Feb. 21-28, are having to face the reality that the German market has finally leveled out, and many indie sales companies are fighting to survive with the challenges of the international marketplace becoming more complex than ever, and the potential threat of actor and writer strikes. "The independent film community is at a very sensitive stage right now," says Artisan Entertainment CEO Amir Malin. "Irrespective of big films coming into the marketplace with name directors and cast, if the international marketplace cannot deliver certain budget parameters for a film then the budgets will have to be reduced and the conservatism of buyers to pay high prices will cause disruptions in the marketplace."

1-Martine McCutcheon; 2-Catherine Zeta-Jones; 3-Madonna; 4-Kate Winslet; 5-Jennifer Lopez; 6-Davina McCall; 7-Sophie Dahl; 8-Isabella Rosselini; 9-Geri Halliwell; 10-Elle McPherson.

Top Ten Men: 1-Brad Pitt; 2-Robbie Williams; 3-George Clooney; 4-David Beckham; 5-Russell Crowe; 6-Ricky Martin; 7-Ben Affleck; 8-Andre Agassi; 9-Pierce Brosnan; 10-Jamie Oliver.

A survey of 3000 18-to-34-year-old women by magazine website newwoman.co.uk reveals that females are their own worst enemies when it comes to image. A third of women questioned said they were constantly on a diet, yet the curvier figures of Kate Winslet, Sophie Dahl and Catherine Zeta-Douglas were widely admired. Lorraine Eames, editor of newwoman.co.uk website, says: "Women are their own worst enemies when it comes to how they feel about their bodies. They don't only come down hard on themselves for not being slim enough or attractive enough, they also pick holes in the appearance of their female friends, work colleagues and family members. The truth is, men are happy with us the way we are - it's women who point out our flaws. It's time we let go of the 'perfect' body dream."

A better actress than most of her films have allowed her to demonstrate, McCormack is already planning to direct her own films. She's hoping this year to make Cork, a love story set in Portugal and written by William Boyd (whom she met when she was trying to persuade her Shadow of the Vampire co-star Willem Dafoe to appear with her). As apparently self-deprecating as she may be, McCormack isn't lacking guts. "It's a natural progression to want to take control of your life. If you're not getting the Kate Winslet, Emily Watson roles all the time, you have to take control."

Sometime in the next few months (no exact date has been agreed but autumn is likely) Jagger's company, Jagged Films, will release its first feature movie. It has taken six years to finish, during which it has overcome a number of obstacles. But early indications are that it could prove to be a winner. The film is based on Enigma, the bestselling novel by Robert Harris, a tale of intrigue set among British code-breakers working at Bletchley Park, 40 miles north of London during the Second World War, who are desperate to unravel German U-boat ciphers. It stars Kate Winslet as the plucky operative in the radio room, Dougray Scott as the mathematician struggling to get over a breakdown, Saffron Burrows as the beauty who went missing and caused the maths genius to lose his mind and Jeremy Northam as the intelligence expert who has to work out whose side everyone is on.

Thanks to all of you who submitted your ballots in the world's largest publicly voted award show, The BLOCKBUSTER ENTERTAINMENT AWARDS®. Record numbers of fans cast their votes and the polls closed on February 19. Now we're busy tallying up the counts.

Want to see who are the fans' favorites in the entertainment industry? Then tune into your local FOX affiliate on April 11 to see the star-studded event featuring an amazing array of celebrities as presenters, performers - and winners! A grand total of 65 award categories are up for grabs this year: 35 in movies, 24 in music and 6 in games. It'll be a sparkling scene, so don't miss it!

Fox Searchlight exploited nominations, including a best-thesp nod for Geoffrey Rush, to re-expand ''Quills'' to 201 theaters, a boost of 165. That produced $318,000 in grosses over the weekend to push the film's total to $6.2 million after 13 weeks.

The arrival of Time Inc's InStyle in the UK last Friday was the first in a series of celebrity magazine launches scheduled for the coming weeks. Next month will see the debut of another US import, Conde Nast's Glamour, plus Emap's Celebrity Bodies and, almost certainly, a spin-off from IPC Media's Now, called Now Star Diet & Fitness. The newcomers will do battle with established celebrity weeklies - Hello!, OK! and Now. In such a crowded market, those who can pay the most, or who can use some other leverage in order to ensure access to celebrities, are surely the likeliest to succeed…

Time Inc International president Michael Pepe explains: ''We have learned from our other international editions in Australia and Germany that if you have an American celebrity using products only available in America, then it defeats the whole purpose.'' Given this editorial strategy, Lorraine Candy, editor of leading women's glossy Cosmopolitan, suggests that a dearth of genuine A-list British celebrities may be a handicap to InStyle in the UK. ''Everybody wants to know what Julia Roberts' home looks like, or what's in her shoe cupboard, but there aren't many huge British celebrities. We have Anna Friel and Kate Winslet, but who else? Posh Spice works for OK! and Hello!, but there aren't enough to sustain InStyle for 12 issues a year.'' InStyle editor Dee Nolan disagrees. She says that style is more important than fame, and confirms that InStyle will mix its Hollywood star count with home-grown celebrities.

She continues to keep busy. Her next project - Therese Raquin - is set in 19th century France and is a fervent tale of adultery, revenge and murder. Kate Winslet will be cast as Therese Raquin with Judi as her mother, Madame Raquin.

Find out who rakes in the most in part two of our brilliant guide to Britain's richest people…

#62 - Kate Winslet -- The Titanic star had a quiet year after taking six months off to give birth to daughter Mia. But with two movies, Quills and Enigma, in the can, Kate, 25, still earned £2 million. She's due to produce and star in Therese Raquin.

Kate Winslet received a 'Golden Camera' in Berlin on Thursday and yesterday she presented her new movie 'Quills'...

TV Spielfilm: Are you here with your husband and daughter? How is little Mia?

KW: Very well. She's a pretty little thing, unlike her mother. She looks exactly like my husband Jim and is just as sweet.

TVS: You appear nude in 'Quills' again. Does it get easier?

KW: No, I hate nude scenes, they're terrible. I mistrust everyone who says they don't affect them. Just imagine you're sitting together with ten people and have to get on a table without any clothes on - it just isn't very pleasant.

TVS: What is true about the rumour that you lost weight in order to persist in the film business?

KW: Complete bulls**t! Of course, I wouldn't have got a role after the birth, I gained about 20 kilos during my pregnancy, and they have gone again. But I would never sell myself in Hollywood through a diet.

TVS: Are you afraid of the double burden as a working mother?

KW: No I still have enough time for my daughter. And Mia is the center of my life, in any case.

As Nolan says, while women are interested in the stock exchange and clued up on current affairs, she doesn't want to provide them with her version of that. What she's going to tell them is where to buy the dress and shoes Calista Flockhart wore to the Golden Globes. This is InStyle, a magazine to pander to the UK's growing obsession with Hollywood and its high-maintenance celebrities… Nolan believes it will work here too. ''I don't think British women are any less likely to look at a woman who's got her act together and not want to know how,'' she says.

Originally designed as a pre-emptive strike against Hello! which was planning to cross the Atlantic, InStyle was to be a stars-at-home magazine, but it soon became clear that readers preferred the celebrity fashion, so an 'A-list' of names was developed… ''We instinctively know who is stylish and who isn't,'' says Nolan. ''There are more and more British cover stars to choose from - Kate Winslet, Minnie Driver, Catherine Zeta-Jones.'' All very well, but these girls have been given the Hollywood make-over and they are just in a different league to the television presenters featured [in the first issue].

He is on course to be the next standard-bearer of Scottish film, darling. ''The thinking woman's Ewan McGregor'', as one crazed fan put it. What else? Well, he was the bad guy in Mission Impossible 2 and proved a formidable opponent to Tom Cruise's secret agent Ethan Hunt. But not good enough, because he didn't get the girl. What's next? Oh, he's fighting off producers with a stick by all accounts. 'Enigma' with the lovely Kate Winslet is due at a cinema near you any day now.

The Noscars are our annual celebration of Tinseltown types who didn't get an Oscar nod -- the second team, if you will. Some of them deserve better and didn't get it; some of them deserve obscurity, but we need five nominees to round out the list. They're all here...

Best Supporting Actress: Lupe Ontiveros, ''Chuck & Buck''; Alfre Woodard, ''What's Cooking?''; Kate Winslet, ''Quills''; Michelle Yeoh, ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon''; Zhang Ziyi, ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon''.

Not many folks saw ''Chuck & Buck,'' but everyone who did, it seems, loved the maternal Ontiveros as the mentor of a tweaked man-child. Rent it. Woodard is always terrific -- and so is Winslet -- but these past Oscar nominees were left out this year; Yeoh and Zhang helped elevate "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" past cult status and into the rarefied air of 10 Oscar nominations.

And the Noscar goes to: Lupe Ontiveros.

Reflecting the festival's growing importance as a major event near the start of the year, this year's Berlinale hosted an unusually large number of Hollywood stars: Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery, Kate Winslet, Juliette Binoche, Geoffrey Rush along with director Soderbergh and novelist John Le Carre. A total of 23 films from around the world were competing for top honours at the 12- day Berlinale, considered one of the world's top film festivals after Cannes and alongside Venice. More than 300 films were screened during the 51st annual event.

A special celebrity tax unit has been set up to probe lucrative deals between stars and glossy magazines. The Inland Revenue investigation follows a rush of exclusive buy-ups in magazines such as Hello! and OK. Stars have accepted up to pounds 1million for the coverage of weddings and intimate chats in new homes. And now a team of six inspectors based in London are to go over celebrity deals in minute detail. They particularly want to find out whether any payments were made in cash, but will also look into any so-called ''payments in kind'', whereby instead of money magazines provide luxury holidays or pay for all wedding arrangements.

British actors look likely to reap the benefits of the forthcoming strike by the American actors' trade union. Even members of the striking union - who include Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Gary Oldman - will be allowed to carry on working after the strike begins on June 30, provided the film is not being shot in America, has no American finance and has not been presold to US distributors. What this leaves is anybody's guess; Gaelic documentaries and home videos in the back garden, presumably.