Kate Winslet on why Hollywood struggles to portray strong women
Despite an Oscar and two Emmys to her name, Kate Winslet still felt like she wasn't cut out to play the lead in the first movie she was going to produce.
"When I was doing 'Lee,' I would sit there and I would say, 'this is ridiculous. This, I can truly think of at least five other brilliant actresses who would have played this part much better than me. Like a lot better,'" Winslet said.
That role that gave Winslet so much angst was that of American photographer Lee Miller — one of the few female journalists on the front lines of World War II. Miller captured some of the most haunting images from the war, including some of the first uses of napalm and Nazi concentration camps.
Fighting to bring "Lee" to the screen
Winslet said she knew it wouldn't be an easy sell in Hollywood.
"There was one potential investor who said to me, 'why should I like this woman?' I mean, she's drunk, she's, you know, she's like loud. She, I mean, he just probably stopped short of saying she has wrinkles on her face," Winslet said.
She said one director told her that if she starred in his film, he would get her "little" "Lee'' made.
The actor didn't make the movie with those men. Instead, she insisted on bringing in a female director, co-producer and writers. Winslet was intimately involved in every step of the production.
Winslet spent years visiting Miller's estate in the English countryside, where the photographer lived with her husband, a British painter.
With the help of Miller's son, Winslet scoured the archives. She decided to focus the film not on Miller's history as a model who had many lovers, but on her time as a war photographer.
To tell the story, Winslet enlisted a historian to make an exact replica of Miller's camera, and really took pictures while she was acting.
"It couldn't just be a prop," Winslet said. "It needed to feel like an extension of my arms. I had to be confident and comfortable with it. And in order to do that, I had to know what I was doing."
From making sandwiches to making movies
Winslet grew up in Reading, a working class town just outside of London, as the second of four children. Her father was a struggling actor who often gave his daughter the advice she still lives by: you're only as good as your last gig.
"He would sort of hop from job to job and then he would do, you know, part time work to make ends meet in the meantime," she said. But even though there was little to go around, Winslet said, "we were really happy."
With financial help from a charity for actors, she enrolled in a local theater school when she was 11. Winslet would catch a train into London for auditions. She was working in a deli at 16 when she got the news that she had landed her first movie role.
"I was making a sandwich and the phone rang and I swear to God there was something about the way the phone rang," she said.
After filming that first movie, "Heavenly Creatures," she went right back to making sandwiches.
"That was what I knew. You know, my dad would do jobs and he'd go back to, you know, tarmacing the roads or working as a postman. So I just thought, oh, well, that's what you do as an actor," Winslet said. "If you're lucky, you get a job and then you go back to a day job."
At 20, she got the offer for the part that would make Hollywood history — playing Rose, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack, in "Titanic," the first film to break a billion dollars at the box office.
Winslet has had her pick of lead roles ever since.
Film critics 60 Minutes spoke with compared her to greats like Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep. Winslet spends months, even years, preparing for roles; she learned to dig fossils for "Ammonite," make dresses for "The Dressmaker" and free dive, holding her breath for more than 7 minutes, for "Avatar: The Way of the Water." She also develops an elaborate backstory for every character, down to what sport they played in school and how they feel about their mothers.
And though she may seem like someone with a shelf full of Oscars, she won her first and only in 2009 for her portrayal of a Nazi prison guard in "The Reader." For years, she kept the statue in her bathroom so guests could hold it up in the mirror and pretend to win.
Dealing with scrutiny of her appearance
While "Titanic" made Winslet a star, she says it came at a cost; paparazzi aggressively pursued her. Her appearance became the subject of intense media scrutiny – something she says started young.
She recalls a drama teacher once told her to settle for the fat girl parts.
"It made me think, I'll just show you," Winslet said. "Just quietly. It was like, sort of a quiet determination, really."
Winslet has pushed back against the criticism she received after "Titanic" – speaking up not just for herself herself, but "for all those people who were subjected to that level of harassment. It was horrific. It was really bad."
Now 49, Winslet said she's developed an armor that she brings to characters, like Lee Miller. While filming "Lee," a crew member came up to Winslet and suggested she sit up and suck it in because she was showing a lump. It was advice Winslet ignored.
"No, I don't think Lee would have done [it,]" Winslet said. "It's about knowing that her ease with her physical self was hard won."