Kate Winslet – Twenty years ago when she was eager to share

September 2004 By Philip Berk

James Cameron was once King of the World.

When he picked up his Academy Award for Titanic, that’s what he called himself.

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio worked with him on Abyss. 

At the time she told she’d never work with him again. “He would say things that would stop your heart. He was so blunt. I don’t have points on the film so if you fuck up my day, that’s what my life’s about at that moment. I can’t afford to spend my life making films and being miserable.”

So imagine my surprise when Kate Winslet let slip that she virtually broke down doors to get the role in Titanic.

“I just kept on calling Jim Cameron. I put myself on a plane from England, came out to L.A., had meetings. I really went for it because I so wanted to play the part.”

Although I shouldn’t  be surprised. 

I can remember, when I was president of the Hollywood Press Assn., how passionately she campaigned for a Golden Globe nomination for Hideous Kinky, unsuccessfully I might add.

Passion is what Kate is all about. 

At her Iris press conference, when her first marriage was unraveling and she was rumored to be having an affair with Sam Mendez, the Academy Award winning director of American Beauty, she flatly refused to talk about her personal life. 

In Los Angeles for her latest, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, an esoteric romantic comedy in which she plays opposite Jim Carrey, suddenly she’s  forthcoming, vivacious, and more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her before.

Motherhood must have something to do with it, although she was also breastfeeding the last time we spoke. 

Much however has happened since.

She has divorced Jim Threapleton, the assistant director she met while filming Hideous Kinky and the father of her three year old daughter Mia. 

And she has married Mendez, ten years her senior. They dated eighteen months before they tied the knot last May. 

Their son Joe was born earlier this year.

What kind of father is Sam? I ask her.

“He’s absolutely amazing and incredibly hands on. He’s always been wonderful with Mia, and it’s just more wonderful to see how he is with Joe. He just loves every minute of it, and in fact last night he was up in the middle of the night and gave Joe a bottle of expressed milk for me so I could have a bit more sleep.”

So she’s found happiness at last. 

(Her first love Stephen Tredre died tragically of a brain tumor.)

“I think I’m getting it right this time. Sam is an incredibly wonderful person and we are very, very happy. It’s really great. He’s a wonderful husband and an incredible dad and I really couldn’t wish for more.” 

And she feels fulfilled?

“The wonderful thing about having children is that things from your own childhood suddenly come back to you. Just a couple of weeks ago I found myself singing a song to Joe and Mia which my mother used to sing to me, and I had completely forgotten about it. It’s great being a parent and having this unopened memory box and the memories creep out one by one.”

Are they going to able to work and still be together?

“The only time in our whole relationship that we’ve worked at the same time was when Sam did Gypsy (on Broadway) and I did Eternal Sunshine, and it was completely fine. Neither of us has worked since last May, and we’ve had a wonderful time, just being together and having great holidays and time with the kids. That’s tremendously important to me. You just have to plan your life, be very structured about your days, and weekends become very much the focus in terms of family. I still only do one or,  at the very outside. two films a year, so in reality it only takes up twelve weeks of my time, and when that happens we go with it.”

Did she have an easy pregnancy?

“The second was very different from the first. In fact when I found out I was pregnant with my son, I knew it was going to be a boy. I felt different, I craved different foods. I carried the baby differently. With my daughter, I was always much more pregnant in my rear end, and with my son it was all very much out front. It was like one of those nice, neat little footballs. But the real difference was the birth. Until very recently I never discussed the fact that I had a very difficult birth with Mia. I had wanted to do the whole thing naturally, and I couldn’t wait to experience it, but I ended up with a 37-hour labor which resulted in an emergency Caesarean, which was very upsetting to me, because I had spent my life being told I had these fantastic child-bearing hips. So with my son, I was determined that no matter what, I was going to do this thing naturally. So I just hoped for the best. I did a lot of walking during the pregnancy, and I had a wonderful, much longed-for natural delivery. I was in labor 24 hours, and he came out completely beautifully. It was a triumphant birth, and it laid a lot of ghosts to rest for me. It was incredible to experience being able to do it totally naturally. “   

Was there a downside to being pregnant?

“Just one thing, your mind, it just goes. I mean you cannot remember your phone number. When I got Enigma, I was five months pregnant with Mia and I swear to God, I couldn’t remember my lines. It was so traumatizing. Was I going to be known as this useless actress who cannot remember a piece of dialogue? I had never had an experience like that. It was so horrifying but fortunately it passed.”

And with Joe?

“Again, complete, total, and utter memory loss. All I can say is thank God we had finished shooting Eternal Sunshine by the time I found out I was pregnant. People would call, and I’d be in the middle of something, and I’d say, ‘I’ll call you back in two minutes.’ And I would completely forget!”

So what else can she say about her marriage?

“The key to a long lasting relationship is honesty and laughter, and Sam really makes me laugh. No one makes me laugh like he does. I usually shy away from talking about my personal life, but these days it’s so incredibly great, I honestly couldn’t wish for more.”

Having interviewed Sam on two occasions, I’ve never noticed a sense of humor. Hugh Grant, yes, but not Sam!

Is there any truth that she’s planing a trip to India?

During the making of Hideous Kinky she became interested in Buddhism.    

“My mum had heard that story, she called me, and she was equally amazed. So no, I am absolutely not going to India. It’s frustrating when you hear something like that. How on earth could people possibly think that I would leave my ten-week-old baby and go away at this wonderful time! I’m still like that with Mia, too. I can’t stand it if she’s out of my sight for more than two hours at a stretch. And I have no intention of going to India to meditate.”

Has she noticed differences in the two children, are her feelings different?

“It’s exactly the same, the same amount of love you feel for both. But they’re very different characters. Mia was always more observant, she’d look around in a very kind of fast way, she was more lively. Joe is very chilled out; he just smiles and gazes around. He’s a very, very relaxed little boy.  Mia was too, but you can feel that their characters are quite different. Every child is different.” 

   In June she’ll  be returning to New York for John Torturro’s Romance And Cigarettes, as part of an ensemble cast that includes Susan Sarandon, James Gandolfini, and Adam Sandler.

And at the end of the  year she’ll  be seen in Neverland, in which Johnny Depp plays J. M. Barrie and she plays Sylvia Llewellyn-Davies, the mother of  the four boys involved in a supposedly “unsavory” relationship with the Peter Pan creator.

Will the film deal with that aspect?

“Not at all. It’s about a relationship that was quite wonderful and magical. In terms of the rumor of how unsavory the relationship was I can’t comment because it’s just speculation. Our J. M. Barrie in the movie is played by Johnny Depp so he can be nothing but wonderful, touching, charming, and affectionate.”

What was it like working with Johnny?

“I loved working with him.”

Did their families bond?

“Vanessa (his wife) was there with their two children, and Jack, their little boy, was very young. I think he was three or four months old at the time, and obviously Mia was there, and we would all have lunches together, and the kids would play, Mia and (Johnny’s daughter) Lily Rose. They would do pictures together and painting. We talked about being a parent. It was a big thing for both of us.”

In Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, she plays an eccentric New Yorker whose memories of a tumultuous relationship are scientifically erased from her mind. 

Can she think of any memories in  her past that she would like to erase?

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t choose to erase any part of my life, even the really bad stuff. We all go through good and bad things, and in some weird way I am almost grateful for some of the bad times, because those experiences make us stronger.”

Not even her past relationships?

“I wouldn’t want to erase anything in terms of relationships. I wouldn’t take any of those things away.”

Nothing at All?

“Maybe when I was younger and the embarrassing little things that happened then, it would be nice to press the button and have them suddenly disappear.”

Such as?

“There was one time when I was fourteen, and I was at a tap-dancing class, and there was a wonderful guy in the class, and we were joking around, and he told me a joke that really made me laugh. We became completely hysterical, and we were tap-dancing away, and the music’s going, and I was laughing so much I actually peed myself in the class! I had to keep tap-dancing and spinning and turning until I just found the rest-room door and fell into it and hoped nobody had noticed. It was a very, very embarrassing moment.”

For the record after the death off Stephen Tredre, she had a brief relationship with Rufus Sewell before she married Threapleton

Professionally, she’s been nominated three times for an Academy award, the first for for Sense And Sensibility in 1995,  the second in 1997 for Titanic,  and a third time in 2001 for playing the young Judi Dench in Iris.

UPDATE

She is now happily married third time, a multiple award winner and at the top her game