The five favourite roles of Kate Winslet
Few actors of the modern era have proven themselves to be anywhere near as consistent as Kate Winslet, who fully earned her reputation and status as one of her generation’s finest talents through a string of top-tier performances spanning almost 30 years.
During that time, she’s notched an Academy Award from seven nominations in total, to take pride of place in a trophy cabinet that also includes five Baftas, five Golden Globes, two Primetime Emmys, and even a Grammy for ‘Best Spoken Word Album for Children’ for her narration of Listen to the Storyteller.
Despite experiencing such success and hoovering up so many accolades, though, when Winslet was asked to name the five favourite roles of her career by MovieZine, the first one she listed was her feature debut in Peter Jackson’s genre-bending crime drama Heavenly Creatures.
Explaining her reasoning, Winslet couldn’t overlook the fact she debuted in not just a well-received project but one that endured through multiple generations: “I was very lucky not just to be cast in that wonderful role as my first film, but that as my first film, it ended up being a really good film.”
Reflecting on its legacy, the star was thrilled that Heavenly Creatures still exists as “a film people remember and still talk about today,” calling it a “big deal” for her both personally and professionally that at the age of only 17, she’d won rave reviews from critics and put herself on the map at the very first attempt.
Michel Gondry’s existential romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was noted by Winslet as being “a big kind of turning point in my career” because it was her first major opportunity to play an American character. No longer restricted or pigeonholed by what she called “lots of kind of English roles, sort of more classical period stories,” her turn as Clementine “opened lots of other doors” to stave off the potential threat of typecasting.
Underselling The Reader as “a big deal for me as an actress”, considering it was the role of Hanna Schmitz that won her an Oscar for ‘Best Actress’, Winslet would also describe reuniting with long-time friend Leonardo DiCaprio in Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road as a “very special experience”, rounding out her selections with another Oscar-nominated outing as Joanna Hoffman in Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs.
Of course, James Cameron’s Titanic was a notable omission given that it became the highest-grossing release in the history of cinema, launched Winslet to superstardom, and existed as more of a cultural juggernaut than simply a mere movie. However, she was quick to acknowledge the elephant in the room by justifying her rationale for leaving it out: “That would be predictable, wouldn’t it?”
Kate Winslet’s five favourite roles:
- Juliet Hulme (Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson, 1994)
- Clementine Kruczynski (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry, 2004)
- Hanna Schmitz (The Reader, Stephen Daldry, 2008)
- April Wheeler (Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes, 2008)
- Joanna Hoffman (Steve Jobs, Danny Boyle, 2015)
