Why Kate Winslet refused to capitalise on her big break: “My agents were miserable”
When Kate Winslet left school, she was quick to get stuck into professional acting roles, landing a part on the series Dark Season before appearing on a string of other British shows. Clearly passionate about her craft from a young age, within a few years she’d found herself cast as one of the main characters in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures.
The 19-year-old actor impressed critics with her performance, leading her to another major role in Ang Lee’s 1995 film Sense and Sensibility, written by and co-starring Emma Thompson. Playing the romantic and impulsive Marianne Dashwood from Jane Austen’s beloved 1811 novel, the actor was nominated for a ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Oscar, cementing her place in Hollywood.
Proving her brilliance at period roles, Winslet was soon cast in James Cameron’s Titanic opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. She portrayed the upper class Rose, a young woman who falls in love with DiCaprio’s lower-class artist Jack after they meet onboard the ship, inevitably leading to disaster. The tragic love story made her one of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood, with the film currently sitting at a total gross of over $2 billion.
Winslet’s performance earned her another Oscar nomination, and it seemed as though she had the whole industry at her fingertips. She could’ve picked another blockbuster as her next role, hoping to keep up the momentum she’d established with Titanic, but she instead decided to go in the opposite direction.
The actor knew it was important to remain in control of her career at this point, refusing to get pulled under by the current of the industry’s intense demands. Thus, she followed the film with a role in 1998’s Hideous Kinky, directed by Gillies MacKinnon, a low-budget movie about a young woman who moves to Morocco with her children. Here, she falls for a man named Bilal, played by Saïd Taghmaoui, best known for his role in La Haine.
“My agents were miserable,” she told The New York Times, explaining, “OK,’ they said, ‘You’re going to ride this enormous wave by making a tiny film in the desert. That’s a real good idea.’ But they know me. They know I make my own decisions, and I didn’t want to get lost or confused by the hugeness of Titanic.”
She knew that she had to do what felt best, and with the success of Titanic under her belt, she was luckily afforded the space to have some creative control over her career. “I deliberately did not do the whole Hollywood thing. I wanted to go to work every day and know everyone’s name on the set. It sounds a little mystical, but I had to look after my soul.”
Hideous Kinky, which was inspired by Esther Freud’s autobiographical novel, saw Winslet receive significant praise, although the movie didn’t gross a considerably large sum. Since then, Winslet has balanced indie movies and bigger Hollywood productions, starring in everything from Jane Campion’s indie drama Holy Smoke! and the moving Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to the huge blockbuster Avatar: The Way of Water.
