Hollywood actress Kate Winslet celebrates her 35th birthday today.
Here's a look at her personal and professional journey so far…
Hollywood actress Kate Winslet celebrates her 35th birthday today.
Here's a look at her personal and professional journey so far…
Born to Roger Winslet and Sally Bridges, Kate Winslet began studying drama at the age of 11 at the Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead, Berkshire, where she was the head girl.
Kate came into her talent at an early age. Winslet began studying drama at the age of 11 at the Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead, Berkshire, where she was head girl.
She scored her first professional gig at 11, dancing opposite the Honey Monster in a commercial for a kids' breakfast cereal.
Kate's career began on television, with a role in the BBC children's science fiction serial Dark Season.
Her first big break in the film industry came at the young age of 17, when she was cast as an obsessive adolescent in Heavenly Creatures in 1994. The film was based on a true story of two fantasy-gripped girls who commit a brutal murder, and was praised by critics. Though her first, Kate won the Empire Award, London Film Critics Circle Award for the best actress category. She also won the New Zealand Film and TV Award for Best Foreign Performer.
The very next year, she floored the critics with her performance in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility as Marianne Dashwood. This role won the young starlet a number of awards for best performance, including the BAFTA, along with another number of nominations.
But true recognition came with James Cameron's Titanic in 1997, alongside the dashing Leonardo DiCaprio. The most expensive movie at the time, Kate proved her mettle and talent to the world.
The actress couldn't attend the premiere of the film, as she had to attend the funeral of her good friend and ex-beau Stephen Tedre. But the film won her 11 nominations and 4 awards for Best Actress.
In 1999, Kate added another notch in her belt with Holy Smoke, where she played the role of a girl who undergoes a spiritual awakening in India and embraces the teachings of a guru named Baba. The movie was extensively shot in New Delhi and Pushkar in India.
Starring alongside Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as the stunning Clementine, again brought the talent of the young lass to the top. The film was a neo-surreal, bordering on sci-fi, romantic fantasy that quite boggled the mind.
The age old Peter Pan in an altogether different light, Finding Neverland focused on the Scottish writer Barrie (played by Johnny Depp) and his relationship with Sylvia (Winslet). Their relationship inspired him to write the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up.
The success of the film could be seen in numbers. Budgeted at $25 million, the movie grossed $51,676,606 in the US and $67 million in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $118,676,606.
In 2006, Kate Winslet starred in another winning role in the drama Little Children, with Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly, Noah Emmerich and Jackie Earle Haley.
2006 also saw Winslet in the romantic comedy The Holiday opposite Jack Black, Cameron Diaz and Jude Law.
Though an award winner many times over, Kate never got as many accreditations as in her heart wrenching role as Hanna Schmitz in The Reader(2008).
Based during the Hitler-Nazi regime, the movie had her character in an odd-coupling with a young teenage boy.
The same year Kate did yet another award winning role as April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road.
10 years after Titanic, this film had her paired once again with Leonardo Di Caprio, and was directed by her husband.
On a personal front, a young Kate met actor-writer Stephen Tredre on the sets of Dark Season, with whom she had a nearly five-year relationship.
Stephen died of bone cancer soon after as Winslet was completing the Titanic.She and Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio have remained best friends since the filming.
After this unforeseen ending, Winslet was in a relationship with Rufus Sewell that ended soon enough, and in 1998 she married director Jim Threapleton.
She met Jim while on the sets of Hideous Kinky. The couple soon welcome a daughter Mia (Italian for My) in 2000. But all didn't end well, when the couple got divorced in 2001.
The actress then met Sam Mendes, whom she married in 2003. Winslet began a relationship with Sam Mendes, whom she married and soon gave birth to a beautiful baby boy Joe at the end of the year itself.
About her spur-of-the-moment marriage to Sam Mendes, Kate said, "We hadn't been planning to do it but we thought it was rather a good idea, so we just did it."
Earlier this year, in March, Kate and Mendes announced their separation saying, "The split is entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement."
Through all the glitz and the glamour, Kate Winslet has been spotted being a great mother to Mia and Joe, often being spotted walking them to school and back.
Kate with Mia (Left) and Joe (Right).
Unfortunately, her stardom has also cost her dearly where along with being titles as one of the world's sexiest women and best actresses, Winslet has also been mocked for her fluctuating weight.
She was one of the youngest to have been nominated for two Academy Awards - Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Titanic (1997) - at the age of 20 and 22 respectively.
Known for being down to earth, Kate said in An interview: "I was on the tube just before Christmas. and this girl turned round to me and said, 'Are you Kate Winslet?'. And I said, 'Well, yes. I am actually'. And she said, 'And you're getting the tube?' And I said, 'Yes'. And she said, 'Don't you have a big car that drives you around?' And I said, 'No'. And she was absolutely stunned that I wasn't being driven round in some flash car all the time. It was ludicrous."
After having won her first Oscar for The Reader, Kate said, 'I'd be lying if I hadn't made a version of this speech before. I think I was eight years old and staring into the bathroom mirror. And this [holding up her statuette] would've been a shampoo bottle... Well, it's not a shampoo bottle now!'
