The Oscar-winning British beauty is a woman who men love to love and women want to be — and she does it all with a refreshing lack of pretension and an intimidating talent.
In 2007, at the tender age of 31, Kate became the youngest actress ever to earn five Oscar nominations. This year’s Academy Awards in Los Angeles saw her nominated for another Oscar for her performance The Reader. Dressed in a show-stopping asymmetrical Yves Saint Laurent gown for this year's awards, the 33 year old finally took home one of the prized statuettes for her haunting performance in The Reader in which she wowed audiences as a former Nazi death camp guard who has a love affair with a teenage boy in post-war Germany and is later put on trial for war crimes.
Kate Winslet is renowned for having played a diverse range of characters throughout her career, but is best-known for her stunning and critically acclaimed performances in Titanic (1997) and as Marianne Dashwood, the more fiery of the Dashwood sisters in Sense and Sensibility (1995). Kate broke free of her English rose typecasting in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) where she played a border-line neurotic woman opposite Hollywood funny-man Jim Carrey in one of his only serious roles to date.
Her film career began in New Zealand in 1992 when she auditioned for Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, and after enjoying steady work, Kate’s name came to Hollywood’s attention after her mesmerising performance in James Cameron’s Titanic. Ever since, Kate has been in constant demand and is one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood.
Kate's Oscar for her role in The Reader will sit on an already much-adorned awards shelf as Kate has won acclaim from her peers including the Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, in addition to having been nominated for an Emmy.
Kate Winslet is not a Hollywood limelighter, preferring to keep her private life private. After a five year relationship with actor-writer Stephen Tredre ended when he died of bone cancer, Kate married director Jim Threapleton in 1998 with whom she has a daughter, Mia Honey. The couple divorced in 2001 and Kate went on to marry her current husband and partner in 2003, Sam Mendes. Kate and Mendes have a son, Joe Alfie, together and currently live in New York City.
While her weight fluctuations over the years have attracted a great deal of media attention and criticism, Kate has seemingly rejected the usual Hollywood pressures and is a stunning natural beauty and pin-up girl for real women the world over.
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