Kate Winslet: A Life In Pictures

but that's one of the great things about acting is that you know sometimes you'll find yourself working with people who are quite different to you and have different ways of going about things which Jim most definitely did and you have to be a team you know and that for me is one of the most exciting things about being a part of a film given how many films you've made what a huge success you've had do you have a kind of shorthand for the films that you want passed on a particular type of director a particular genre what are the what's the kind of tick list that you no I don't think so I think I just always want to be terrified of a role and surprised by it and immediately feel challenged by it or reading something that I think oh my God I could never I could absolutely never play that part and when I read the reader I just went oh well obviously that's not me there's no way I can play this part in the last probably three to four years I have definitely found myself saying to my agent who's in this room room um I love you very much D been more 15 um I've definitely found myself saying you know I I I want to really play character roles now I suddenly feel a strong very strong desire to be fully out of my comfort zone all the time which is that's a that's a big that's a big deal you know those parts are quite difficult to find actually take us back to the early '90s you done little bits and pieces of TV but nothing you know nothing too notable casualty and a little bit of this the other how did you then find yourself on the other side of the world making a film for the young Peter Jackson well I can tell you a great deal about this because I I remember it very very very clearly because it was an audition for Heavenly Creatures and I just finished my gcses and things moved really suddenly quite quickly I was sent the script for a film audition and um and my dad's in the room who'll probably remember this I remember that we had to drive to pick up the script because I had to go for the audition the next day and it might get lost in the post and you know and I remember saying to Dad oh my god dad is a it's an audition for a film wow oh my god do you think do you think like I might get it and he just looked at me and he said yeah you will and I remember thinking that's cuz he he was trying to tell me about the attitude I needed to have cuz Dad's an actor as well and and so I remember thinking God that's it isn't it I've got to I've got to absolutely believe that I'm going to get this part because so much of it is believing that you will and willing things into existence and um and I do remember thinking okay I'm going to go in there and I'm going to I'm just somehow going to give them no option but to give me this part and and and of course a part of that is remaining incredibly calm and um and I yeah I I remember trying really hard not to appear to you know like I want this part you know trying not to appear too desperate um and then I met people Peter and uh his wonderful partner Fran wsh who co-wrote Heavenly Creatures and and I just thought they were they were I just thought they were so lovely I auditioned and then they called me back again about two or 3 weeks later and then I was called back again it was just terrifying and then they sort of made me wait for about two more months and then I finally got this phone call telling me that I'd I'd got the part and I was working at the time in a delicatess and in Reading as a part-time job where I think every member of my family has worked at some point and uh and the telephone rang and ju I don't know what it was but there was something about the way the telephone rang that day that I went this for me and I knew that it was I was like oh my God and I stopped I was literally mid-ming sandwich I'm like and sure enough the lovely guy Chris who used to own the deli Kate yes phone for you okay sorry I'm just I'm just sorry and just left this sandwich ran to the phone and it was my child agent at the time who said You clever girl and I left the sandwich and I left work and I went home on the bus and told everybody that I'd got this part I don't think any of us could really believe it I was absolutely happily going to be in episodes of casualty and maybe a bit of theater if I was lucky I mean that was I never thought I never ever thought outside of that I really didn't the film itself is so stylized and you're so weird in it weird and did how what were you 18 19 17 17 my God I mean how much did you did you kind of understand the film he was trying to make how much did it mirror the sorts of films that you like there's an interesting thing that happens when you're an actor people automatically assume that you're a movie buff and you must have seen everything and really at that point in my life I'd seen Annie and Bugsy Malone and Greece lots of times and that was sort of about oh and Santa Claus the movie but I hadn't seen I hadn't really seen that many films we didn't get a video player in our house until I think I was about 14 what I remember I had done was when I was given the part I thought my god well who is this Peter Jackson person and I remember the casting director John and Ross hubard saying to me well you know he's done he has sort of a cult following he's made these quite quirky films but I also knew cuz he had told me himself that this film was a bit of a departure for him he had said that he had co-written it with Fran and it's a very special very famous New Zealand murder story and so I remember thinking okay well here I am in England he how do I start preparing for this and so I went to the library and reading and I thought well I'll look up old newspaper articles which I knew existed it's big library and reading and I remember my heart was in my mouth because the murder took place um uh in June 1954 and as I think it was June 22nd and as I'm cranking through the these Pages you know it's June the 18th June the 19th June the 20th June the 21st God I might not find anything June the 22nd Parker Hume murders and I'm like oh my God it's really there it's really real and we wrote about it in this country and so there was something ignited in me from that moment um and is it distracting when it is based on a true story this as this was no I love it I I really do love it and I think I and I love I love being in things that are based on a true story I think probably because of my experience of Heavenly Creatures which was so life-changing I cannot even tell you how confident did you feel oh I didn't feel very confident at all but I do remember Peter and Fran it's a funny thing when you're an English actor and you go into another country they automatically assume that you are fully trained you've got some magical qualification that means that you definitely know better than everybody else which I've played on believe me so in this moment of being terrified in New Zealand and they had cast Melanie Linsky who was 15 she hadn't done really anything at all and so they very much turned to me and they said well you know Kate's going to look after after you it's fine I'm thinking am I okay yes no of of course I'm of course I'm I'm going to look after you because I really know what I'm doing not at all and um and and in a way it sort of it forced me to just jump right in there it was very much a both feet first moment okay you guys think I know what I'm doing I better really pretend I know what I'm doing actually I better really know what I am doing and get ready for this and there was a lot of Direction yes I mean Peter's a he's a brilliant director like that he's very very generous very experimental and we'll absolutely give you all the time you need and there were lots of scenes for us that were quite hard to film and sometimes we wouldn't we we emotionally would get quite overwhelmed by those scenes and he was really amazing at he would actually empty the set he' say Okay can everyone go and have a cup of tea the next thing you went on to which of course with Sense and Sensibility Angley is quoted as saying that he was a bit nervous about you because the because of the way you had attacked the this role and that he sent you off on all sorts of taichi courses he didn't send me off anywhere he bloody well made me do it he did it with me I remember at the back lot at shepperton he would say oh now we do aachi I say I doing what are we doing a taii okay yes of course we're doing taii because of course I don't know anything and you must know everything and clearly I must do taii in order to get into character Ang is not a man of great tact as he will himself admit and I do remember him saying to me oh my God this was truly one of the most awful moments of my I think my whole life still is to to to date at the end of the first day of filming he' barely said anything to me all day and I thought God I'm I I mean maybe I'm just rubbish and maybe maybe I've just been crap he barely said anything and and I remember going to him and saying so you know how how was how was everything and he went ah you'll get better I promise you that is exactly what he said and I went hey he just wanted to calm me down to really really calm me down and um and he did yeah he absolutely did and then of course Titanic it was a huge moment of course in my life it was a big Turning Point moment and you know my life my life did change really overnight and I remember people saying to me before the film came out oh God what how are you going to cope you know your life's going to be you're you know how are you going to not change and I would get I would feel almost defensive and angry I'd think you know I'm not going to change what are you talking about and it truly did overnight I mean I remember one day being able to go and buy a newspaper and a pint of milk no problem and the next day I actually couldn't get out of the house because of Paparazzi and that was a huge shock and nothing really prepares you for that no one really can tell you about what to expect because it's so sort of unknowable and so weird did you have any sense that you were of kind of quite what was going on quite what it could become no I've absolutely no idea I can honestly say I wasn't able to even really enjoy the success of Titanic because it was so frantic I just loved the script and I loved the part um and I and I did love that love story that relationship between Jack and Rose I really did I thought it was amazing and of course Leonardo DiCaprio's name had been mentioned as a possible Jack and um and and I actually read with some some fairly well-known actors for that role which was amazing um and great fun but I just kept thinking oh God you know really hope he does it I really hope Leo does it and um and you know lucky for me he did and uh and it was an completely extraordinary experience but very very hard really very hard so you did hide kingy you did poly smoke it's as if you were particularly sort of seeking out small independent pictures is that what happened I don't really know is is is the truth of that I mean I think um these were incredible parts to play I mean this you know Jane Campion was hot off the heels of piano success and and Harvey kitel I mean my God and and I had been sent the script and and you know it was it was just clear to me that if I had an opportunity to work with both of those people I'd be really stupid not to go for it um and this was an amazing experience um and and taught me a really great deal too um about film acting and working with somebody like Jane who's very experimental um and Harvey obious no Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is quirky personified when you get a role like that which presume is That's How It Was Written do you then spend time kind of unpicking your own character's Journey you cannot imagine it was like hieroglyphics because sometimes for those of you who seen the film you know there are there are memories that are being erased and sometimes we're in the memory as it's erasing and sometimes their memories that are they they either Clementine's memories and sometimes they're Joel's It's absolutely it was all over the map so I mean I think we were always permanently just ever so slightly confused with exactly how this story was really going to be told but when I was asked to play that part I sort of I I kind of couldn't believe it because I hadn't played any parts like that at all at that point I really hadn't I mean she was Clementine you know she was this extraordinary eccentric Bonkers barmy glorious you know person who who who who who absolutely had her own rule book and nothing I had done up until that point really made me feel as though it would warrant a director thinking that I would be right for that part and so I remember feeling tremendously flattered that Michelle gandre wanted me for that role the most incredible thing about this film is how romantic it is I it's one of the most romantic films I've ever seen yes which is very unusual considering it's the pairing of you and Jim KY how confident did you feel that there was going to be a chemistry there I don't know looking back I think I just felt really excited to work with somebody who I never would imagine I'd work with I mean he was absolutely you know he was Ace Ventura I mean he was he was from a different he was the mask I mean he was a different genre of film making to me entirely and um but that's one of the great things about acting is that you know sometimes you'll find yourself working with people who are quite different to you and have different ways of going about things which Jim most definitely did and you have to be a team you know and that for me is one of the most exciting things about being a part of a film is the teamwork that involves everybody there's no hierarchy I mean I can't I have to sort of stamp all that out you know by making sure that I know the you know the name of all the crew members and you know really joining in and sometimes lowbudget films you know helping carry equipment I mean truly you know and and and and then little by little that's sort of oh they're the actors the Untouchable actors you know gradually you can kind of break it down and then you are all in it together and ultimately it makes the working environment not only much more fun to be in but but it means that people really are excited to come to work and and and people bring their best when they're looking forward to being there makes a big difference and and Eternal Sunshine did it definitely taught me that because that was it was proper team effort let's talk about Revolution you Road okay yeah which is a film that came from a novel that you found that you decided you wanted to you thought it had cinematic potential I had read the book and um uh which you know I I don't get time to be honest with you to read many novels I just don't because often when I'm reading it's either bedtime stories or scripts and um um and I read the I read the novel God this is absolutely amazing and then very quickly heard that someone had done a loose draft of it and then we're living in New York at the time and a very dear friend of s Mendes a woman named Cynthia O'Neal um she had come over for coffee or something and I said oh God sin I just read this absolutely amazing book um and someone's written a sort of an a speck script for it and I just I got to find out you know who owns the rights and she went my darling I do and I said what and she said well of yes I do I said hang on hang on stop she said explain yourself and um uh her husband was a man named Patrick O'Neal Who had bought the rights in a poker game from Richard Yates for a dollar that he he he he ended up buying them for a dollar because he lost everything in this game you wouldn't believe that it was the movie I know anyway so he had these rights and he bequeathed them to Cynthia in his will when he passed away she went yeah they're mine I said well can I have them and she went sure and I remember sitting down and um you know having big meetings with the producer about who was going to direct it and who would play Frank and and it was amazing to be a part of all of that and uh and to convince Sam to do it and um and then subsequently Leo which was my biggest coup yet I tell you I was yeah he CU he can be a bit of a monkey to pin down and um and yeah had you seen it as a very sort of cinematic piece it strikes me as being incredibly cinematic when I read it on the page well I don't have a very cinematic brain to be honest I mean I'm not very good at imagining how a film will look I can only really imagine playing the part or what a scene should feel like but in terms of visually I'm not really I don't really have that I can do that with you know home decor but can't really do it I can't really do it with um with films um but I just knew it was an ex you know it was an extraordinary story of about Mar about a marriage um and and I did feel that Leo and I would find something together that was both on the page and not on the page at all and I was quite excited by that and the strange thing about this of course is that you found yourself competing with yourself on at awards time because back to back oh my God you made the reader I know and so aart from the the kind of emotional level of it there was also there's quite a technical challenge with this film because you not only had to age four decades I think but also you had a kind of accent challenge because of course you were an English speaker doing a German accent While most of the cast was German speakers doing English accents with any accent really it's you you can't sort of learn an accent and then apply it to the part you can you it sort of you learn it within the whole process and so so I mean all of Hannah was to me it had to be sort of how she sounded initially I think that it sort of helped me kind of hide behind the fact that I was playing this awful person um there was a brilliant dialect coach who sort of designed the German that we all did because we didn't want any Z and Z nothing really strong and I started working with William Ross ker who is the Fantastic British dialect coach and Susan heery who I owe so much to it was an amazing um experience with her of the two of us really figuring out this dialect together um I'm going to talk about the dress maker I love the fact that it was that it was a comedy I mean it is essentially a dark comedy and and this wonderful role Tilly you know she's really quite complicated um and on the surface appears quite strong but actually she isn't there's huge vulnerability there and lots of sacrifice and sadness in her and um and I just I just I just knew I wanted to throw myself at something that was quite different to a to everything that i' done for for a very very long time let's come up to date and talk about the other film that you have out the moment which of course is Steve Jobs working with Danny Bole this again is based on a real team of people and you got to meet your character she's a very warm woman and actually meeting her after reading the script several times it was so crucial because it really did have a big impact on on on the closeness the physical closeness that we were allowed to have you know those moments when she links his arm or she throws her arm around mother there's a hug or there's a something there's a there are no there's no there's no boundary there there's no barrier between Joanna and and Steve and and that came from the time that I spent with Joanna and the stories that she shared and her enormous affection for Steve and admiration and and and she she loves him still now misses him greatly um and they remain very very good friends um for the rest of Steve's life and and uh and so yeah I felt I really I really did need to be actually more than anything respectful of the of the relationship between her and Steve um and really really honoring it as much as we could and um you've talked in a couple of interviews about how technically challenging this film was and how you felt that you really understood how film making worked as a result of making this was that specifically to do with accent or dialogue I mean the sorin dialogue is extraordinary well the sorin dialogue is an absolute because there's just so flipping much of it I mean it was 187 pages long this script which is really is unusual you know normally a film script at its absolute longest would be maybe 132 Pages or something so this was pretty extreme but it moved at this unbelievable Pace I had been told it was written in three acts I had been told that Danny Bo was going to rehearse each act like a play we were all going to learn it everyone would then shoot one act at a time and go back into the rehearsal room between those shooting periods as well and it just sounded extraordinary it just sounded so so different a proper acting challenge properly spending time with the other actors um and working with Danny Bole which you know the idea of which was you know so thrilling to me and working with Michael God I mean Michael fasbender oh he you know every day he really he really took my breath away because he had it doesn't matter how much I had to do or Seth had to do or Jeff had to do he had he was on every single page every single page of 187 pages I said in not mind introduction that you are very much uh full of press attention everybody kind of you know twists your words every 5 seconds if it's not about weight it's about vulgar gender pay gaps oh yeah can I set that one straight okay so the gender pay Gap thing Jennifer Lawrence is amazing for speaking up and I think that any anyone in this industry particularly women if there's something strongly that they feel isn't working for them or if they're being discriminated against in any way shape or form it's very very important to speak up and so I fully applaud that what I have a problem with is that there's a separate thing that has started happening is that the lid has been somewhat lifted for journalists and so journalists on red carpets will now say so how do you feel about the gender pay Gap what what what what what's the specific question well do you know whether you got paid less or more than Michael fasbender that question that to me is not very nice I'm not going to have that conversation with a friend or even a family member let alone in public and so what's happened as a result of these big very important discussions is that we're then subjected to a particular line of questioning that being a Brit strikes me as being a little bit vulgar you know why why why would I why would I stand on a red carpet and talk about how much I get paid you know I'm not a I'm not a primary school teacher you know um so I it's it's a difficult one for me that you know Kate right at the beginning you talked about uh not being particularly confident at the first in the first performance that you gave now all those films later do you recognize when you've done something good I'm thinking specifically of Steve Jobs in fact which I think is the most incredible performance do you look at yourself and think okay that that time I got it that time maybe maybe occasionally sometimes sort of do you have a favorite among them all a favorite character well yeah a favorite role think a favorite performance you've given I am quite proud of the reader because it it was just so flipping hard um it really it it yeah and I remember I got I'm not a fan of this but I got very thin making the film I remember turning up to cornwal do you remember Mom I turned up after finished filming and I walked down the lane and mom went oh my God and really I I I really had sh and I hadn't even noticed it just it was a properly you know stressful all consuming you know sometimes quite unpleasant experience playing that part um so I probably just because it was so difficult I probably have to say that one I'm sorry to take you back to that grueling time K this has been so wonderful thank you so much thank you very much thank you I think what I would honestly say to people starting out you know it is difficult it is definitely a hard job to do and and you do have to keep working at it you do have to keep practicing things you have to allow yourself to make mistakes you know make them rehearse in your bedroom try not to look in the mirror too much because then you can you rehearse a scene in front of a mirror and you like the way you've said something or done something and all you will do is keep picturing yourself doing it the way you liked rather than being completely present in the moment no looking in mirrors that's not good

Channel: BAFTA Guru

Views: 134,215

Keywords: BAFTA, BAFTA Guru, British Academy Of Film And Television Arts (Award Presenting Organization), creative, career, film making, TV, gaming, actor, advice, Kate Winslet

Id: 1aP96Q9VkwI

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2016