Kate Winslet

Kate Elizabeth Winslet CBE is an English actress. Born in Reading, Berkshire, Winslet studied drama at the Redroofs Theatre School. Her first screen appearance, at the age of 15, was in the British television series Dark Season. She made her film debut playing a teenage murderess in Heavenly Creatures. Winslet received her first BAFTA Award for playing Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility.

About Kate Winslet in brief

Summary Kate WinsletKate Elizabeth Winslet CBE is an English actress. Born in Reading, Berkshire, Winslet studied drama at the Redroofs Theatre School. Her first screen appearance, at the age of 15, was in the British television series Dark Season. She made her film debut playing a teenage murderess in Heavenly Creatures. Winslet received her first BAFTA Award for playing Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. Global stardom followed soon after with her leading role in the epic romance Titanic. She eschewed parts in blockbusters in favour of critically acclaimed period pieces, including Quills and Iris. In 2012, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Divorced the film directors Jim Threapleton and Sam Mendes in 2012. She has been married to the businessman Edward Abel Smith since 2012. The Golden Hat Foundation, which aims to create autism awareness, she has written a book on the topic, The Golden hat: Talking Back to Autism. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009, and in 2012, she was named Commander of The Order of The British Empire  by Queen Elizabeth II. She is particularly known for her work in period dramas, and often portrays angst-ridden women. She has two sisters, Anna and Beth, both of whom are actresses, and a younger brother, Joss. The family had limited financial means; they lived on free meal benefits and were supported by a charity named the Actor’s Charitable Trust.

When Winslet was 10, her father severely injured his foot in a boating accident and found it harder to work, leading to more financial hardships for the family. She appeared in The Lion, the Witch and The Witch and the Wardrobe and played the lead role of Wendy Darling in Peter Pan. In 1991, within two weeks of finishing her GCSE examinations, she made her screen debut as Miss Hannigan in Annie, the Mother Wolf and Lena Marelli in The Jungle Book. She won a Primetime Emmy Award for the first of these and a third BAFTA Awards for the lattermost. For her narration of a short story in the audiobook Listen to the Storyteller, Winslet won a Grammy Award. She played a single mother in 1930s America in the miniseries Mildred Pierce, joined the Divergent film series, and portrayed Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs. In the 2010s, she starred in Finding Neverland, Little Children, Revolutionary Road, and The Reader. She also appeared in commercial and commercial films The Puffs and The Lion and the Witch, the Lion, The Witch  and The  Witch and the Wardrobe and The Lion and The Wizard of Winchester. Her mother worked as a nanny and waitress, and her father, a struggling actor, took labouring jobs to support the family in Reading. Her maternal grandparents were both actors and ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company.