Kate Winslet Biography

Kate Elizabeth Winslet  (born October 5, 1975) is a British actress most famous for her role in the 1997 blockbuster movie Titanic. She was born in Reading, Berkshire, England.

Her career started in 1994 when she performed her first leading role as Juliet Hulme in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. Since then she has acted in several films, such as Sense and Sensibility, Jude, A Kid in King Arthur's Court, Titanic, Hamlet, Hideous Kinky, Holy Smoke, Iris, and The Life of David Gale, earning her three Oscar nominations and two Golden Globess.

On November 22, 1998 she married director Jim Threapleton with whom she has a daughter named Mia. After her divorce in 2001, she began a relationship with director Sam Mendes. Kate married Sam on May 24, 2003 in the West Indies and their son Joe was born on December 22, 2003.

On January 25, 2005 Winslet was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She eventually lost to Hilary Swank. This tied her for the record for most Academy Award nominations for an actress before the age of 30. This nomination was preceded by nominations for Best Supporting Actress in Sense and Sensibility and Iris. Winslet was also nominated for Best Actress in Titanic, but lost to Helen Hunt. She was also nominated for a BAFTA for Best Actress in that film and in Finding Neverland, but lost to Imelda Staunton.

Her home town of Reading has named a street - Winslet Place - in her honour, built on the site of a demolished cinema.

Kate Winslet is famous for her curvaceous figure, and the media, in England in particular, have enthusiastically documented her weight fluctuations over the years. Winslet, a former anorexic, has been outspoken about her refusal to lose weight in order to conform to the Hollywood "ideal". In February 2003, the British edition of GQ magazine published photographs of Winslet which had been airbrushed to make her look dramatically thinner than she really was; Winslet issued a statement saying that the alterations were made without her consent.