Kate Winslet

Kate Winslet has been married to Edward Abel Smith since 2012. She was previously married to Jim Threapleton from 1998 to 2001 and director Sam Mendes from 2003 to 2011. She has three children, including Mia Threapleton and Joe Anders. Mia later appeared with Winslet in the I Am... episode “I Am Ruth”.

Winslet met Threapleton while he was working as an assistant director on Hideous Kinky. She met Mendes after he offered her a part in a play, and the pair later worked together on Revolutionary Road. Winslet met Smith at Richard Branson's Necker Island estate during a house fire. Smith became a stay-at-home parent and helped her raise her children.

Raised in a family of actors, Winslet studied drama at the Redroofs Theatre School and appeared in stage productions, commercials and television programmes. Her first screen appearance came at fifteen in the BBC science-fiction series Dark Season. She made her film debut as Juliet Hulme in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994), a performance that brought her early critical attention.

Winslet gained wider recognition as Marianne Dashwood in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995), written by and starring Emma Thompson. The role earned her a BAFTA Award and an Academy Award nomination. She then appeared in Jude and played Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (both 1996).

Her international breakthrough came with Titanic (1997), in which she played Rose DeWitt Bukater opposite Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson. The film set box-office records and earned Winslet her second Academy Award nomination. Its success made her a global star, but she subsequently chose smaller independent films rather than immediately pursuing more blockbuster roles.

After Titanic, Winslet appeared in distinctive projects including Hideous Kinky (1998), Holy Smoke! (1999), Quills (2000) and Iris (2001). In Iris, she portrayed the young novelist Iris Murdoch, while Judi Dench played Murdoch at an older age. Winslet also received a Grammy Award for narrating the children's audiobook Listen to the Storyteller.

Her performance as Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) marked a change from her earlier period-drama roles and earned another Academy Award nomination. She followed it with Finding Neverland, Little Children, The Holiday and Revolutionary Road, the latter reuniting her with Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Sam Mendes.

Winslet won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Hanna Schmitz in The Reader (2008). In the same awards season, she won Golden Globe Awards for The Reader and Revolutionary Road. She later won a Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for playing Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs (2015), earning her seventh Academy Award nomination.

Winslet moved prominently into television with the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011), playing a divorced mother who tries to establish a restaurant business during the Great Depression. Her performance earned her a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She also appeared in Contagion and Carnage that year.

Her later film roles included the villain Jeanine Matthews in Divergent and Insurgent, the seamstress Tilly Dunnage in The Dressmaker, and a mountaineer in The Mountain Between Us. She played paleontologist Mary Anning in Ammonite (2020) and fashion model and war photographer Lee Miller in Lee (2023), which she also produced.

In Mare of Easttown (2021), Winslet played a troubled Pennsylvania detective investigating a murder. She insisted on using a Delaware County accent for the role and won a second Primetime Emmy Award, along with Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards. She later starred in The Regime (2024) and returned to James Cameron's Avatar franchise in Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025). She made her directorial debut with Goodbye June, which she also produced and starred in.

Winslet co-founded the Golden Hat Foundation with Margret Ericsdottir after narrating the documentary A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism. The foundation aims to create autism awareness. Winslet wrote The Golden Hat: Talking Back to Autism, a book containing correspondence with Ericsdottir, personal statements from public figures and contributions from Ericsdottir's son, Keli Thorsteinsson.

She has also supported literacy, anti-bullying, animal-welfare and environmental causes. Winslet has spoken against body-shaming after being bullied as a child and has opposed the digital alteration of her appearance in magazine and advertising photographs. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012 for services to drama.