Having a Best Actress Oscar (among seven nominations) doesn’t necessarily help open every door in Hollywood. Just ask Kate Winslet.
When the Titanic and Mare of Easttown star set out to secure financing for Lee, her new film about the outspoken model-turned-war photographer Lee Miller, “I came up against men who would say to me, ‘Why should I like this woman?’ I mean, just ridiculous things,” recalls Winslet, who pulled double duty as producer and actress.
Putting the project together took nearly a decade, and she sometimes thought to herself, “ ‘Oh my God, how is this ever going to happen? How am I going to keep going?’ ”
In a way Winslet’s struggles bonded her even more to Miller, who faced resistance when she set out to document the horrors of World War II for Vogue.
The American photojournalist — famous for her stark pictures of concentration camps and even inside Hitler’s home in Germany — was initially dismissed as an “ex-cover girl” and had to push back against chauvinistic editors and military men alike, according to Winslet, who turns 49 on Oct. 5.
Kimberley French/Roadside Attractions Courtesy Everett Collection
But Miller’s persistence inspired her to forge ahead on the film.
“I swear I could feel Lee pulling the levers, going, ‘Come on, come on,’ ” says the U.K. native, noting how Lee outgrew her early modeling career and “became so much in her 30s, her 40s and beyond… That energy she had and the ability she had to live life full-throttle on her terms, to never accept no for an answer and to keep her foot on the gas—I was absolutely guided by that.”
Winslet also had her foot on the gas… and nearly emptied her own tank.
“I’ve yet to master the art of, ‘Okay, leave your work behind, and go home and take a bath and whatever.’ I never do any of that,” says the mom of three, who shares son Bear, 10, with her husband, Edward Abel Smith, 46, a former exec at Virgin Galactic; son Joe, 20, with ex-husband Sam Mendes; and daughter Mia, 23, with ex Jim Threapleton.
She and producing partner Kate Solomon even bunked together temporarily so they could continue working at night after shooting the movie all day.
“We’d have to slightly rewrite something to make it work, and then we’d be phoning the actors to tell them that the dialogue was going to change,” recalls Winslet, who managed only a few hours of sleep each day during the nine-week shoot in Hungary, Croatia and the U.K. “Then I’d be up at 4 a.m., and I’d go to work, and I’d come home, and we’d do the whole thing again.”
She ate, lived and breathed the movie — something her family is glad to have behind them. “It consumed my life completely. They’re very excited for me to not be talking about Lee Miller anymore,” she says with a smile. “So yeah, it was a big part of all of our lives.” (For the record, her loved ones like the film, says Winslet: “Thank God!”)
Kimberley French/Roadside Attractions/Courtesy Everett Collection
It was an exhausting ordeal, but one Winslet is grateful for — especially considering her humble beginnings.
The actress — raised in a working-class household in southern England by Roger, a workaday actor who took odd jobs, and Sandra, a waitress and nanny — first broke out 30 years ago in the 1994 thriller Heavenly Creatures. Since then she’s established herself as one of the most celebrated actresses of her generation.
“Eighteen-year-old Kate Winslet would not have believed any of this if you even told me it was going to happen,” she says. “It’s an extraordinary thing that I get to do with my life and an extraordinary thing that I love. But I’m a very unlikely success story.”
Lee is in theaters Friday, Sept. 27.
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