If there is an actress who has fully embraced the ageing process, it's Kate Winslet. She entered her 40s declaring she felt "triumphant and calm and happy". Now 48, as she nudges towards her next decade, she seems more powerful than ever.
© GettyAsked recently her definition of a movie star today, Kate told a newspaper: "To me, quite honestly, the term 'movie star' is almost an invention in many ways. For me, I just try to do my job well. Try and stay humble. Try to be kind and try to be grateful for everything that I have.
"And most importantly, to remember that when you're a woman and you're getting older… it's a good thing, not a bad thing. Those are qualities that I think help anyone, really, in a high-profile position in this industry."
© GettyShe has always exuded star quality, from her film debut in Heavenly Creatures at the age of 18 to the Oscar winner she is today. And while midlife continues to bring professional fulfilment, it has also brought personal contentment.
She is a happily married mother of three who juggles her career with making packed lunches and doing the school run. She even took a career break in 2021 to be with her family and has rarely worked outside school holidays, so she can bring her children with her to film sets.
"I love being a mum; it was good to have a bit of a reset," the actress has said of her time off. She married her third husband, Edward Abel Smith – Sir Richard Branson's nephew, once known as Ned Rocknroll – in 2012. The couple live in Sussex with their son Bear, ten, actress daughter Mia, 23 – from Kate's brief marriage to director Jim Threapleton and who co-starred with her mother in Channel 4 movie I Am Ruth – and son Joe, 20, from her marriage to director Sam Mendes.
© GettyKate has been vocal in calling out what she regards as the sexism and body shaming that blighted her relationship with the media early on in her career, and is glad that Mia and other women of her generation "know how to use their voice".
Meanwhile, Kate's latest role allows her to play on her midlife power and confidence to full comedic effect, portraying a deluded and menopausal dictator of an imagined Eastern European republic in HBO six-part satirical series The Regime. While many actresses might have run for the hills after reading "menopause" in the script, Kate fearlessly embraced her character's ice baths and night-sweat-soaked silken sheets.
© SkyHer character, deeply paranoid Chancellor Elena Vernham, turns to volatile soldier Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) as an unlikely confidant and lover, sending her dismayed husband into exile in Switzerland.
"It's a twisted love story about two people who should never have fallen in love. What I needed to do was get really brave, actually," explained Kate, who reveals that the couple's sex scenes were so funny that members of the crew had to be sent out for laughing.
"Our cinematographer was a repeat offender, and one of the hair and make-up people," she said. "Matthias had all these tattoos, and as he got sweatier, they just kept sort of rubbing off on parts of my body. That happened a lot."
© HBOThe role also called for Kate to adopt some radical costume choices. "She's willed herself to feel powerful in order to get through. But I was like: 'Hang on, she can't just be the shouty boss,'" noted the actress.
"So, no matter how ludicrous her costumes are – how ridiculously skin-tight and weirdly sexual sometimes she appears to be – it's all as a result of these massive emotional chips that are missing. "She's like a Swiss cheese – she's full of holes."
© Getty ImagesThe Reading-born actress also knew she could not sound like herself in the role and, at pains not to sound like a member of the royal family, settled on an accent reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher.
"The show was originally called The Palace and we've had many shows in recent decades about re-creations of real historical events to do with the British monarchy," Kate said. "So if you call a show The Palace and you put me in that role – and people know how I sound in real life – I was worried the audience might spend the whole first episode trying to understand exactly where they were. So, I knew for the penny to drop quickly, I had to come up with something else."
© GettyKate's diverse CV includes her Oscar-winning portrayal of a Second World War concentration camp guard in The Reader and playing novelist Iris Murdoch in Iris, which earnt her one of her other six Oscar nominations.
The Regime, meanwhile, which also stars fellow Britons Hugh Grant and Andrea Riseborough, also required Kate to sing – specifically Chicago's 1970s soft-rock ballad If You Leave Me Now, which the chancellor insists on singing in public. "I had practised a lot, and the kids were getting sick of me practising," she recalled.
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"I turned up at Abbey Road [recording studio] and thought, okay, I can sing it fairly well and with a certain degree of confidence. I'll just give it a go." However, the director decided she should sing badly instead – sparking more on-set laughter. "Guillaume and I were absolutely wetting ourselves. Oh my God!" she said of her French co-star Guillaume Gallienne, who plays her long-suffering husband.
© Miya Mizuno/HBOIn other scenes, Elena regularly talks to the decomposing corpse of her father, which she keeps in a glass coffin in the palace basement. "I leant right into those scenes, because for a person to have kept the corpse of their deceased parent and go and have chats with them downstairs – I knew that was not a safe emotional place to exist.
"This is a global leader singing Santa Baby as her Christmas message, so we leant into the sheer lunacy of it," she added. "Here is a woman who thinks people want to see her body all of the time. So we went all out. We had her sing the song dressed in this dreadful, trashy Santa/elf gimmicky thing. It was totally mad."
Interview: Gill Pringle
