ARTICLES 2001 JAN-JUNE

February 19: Lorissa posted this interview with Kate on the kwfc mb. It's from the February 18th edition of the Aussie Sunday Telegraph:

"Thrills & Quills," by John Hiscock [2 page article on Rush; 1 page on Kate]
    She shares a kiss with Geoffrey Rush and a bed with Joaquin Phoenix. Explicit stuff and all acting. But Kate Winslet, proud and protective new mum, concedes it'll be a long time before she lets four month old Mia Honey Threapleton watch Quills.
    The much acclaimed film - in which she plays a laundry maid at Charenton, the lunatic asylum where the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned - contains acts of torture and brutality, and Winslet has an explicit lovemaking scene with Joaquin Phoenix. "That scene with Joaquin was the hardest for me to do, not just because it's a nude scene - and they're always hard for me to do - but because there was so much emotion," Winslet says.
    To prepare herself for the role, she read some of the writings of the Marquis de Sade. "I won't give you any examples, but its embarrassingly vile" she says, even blushing in recall. "I'm not easily shocked but I was utterly outraged by it. I was so taken aback by this despicable writing, but kind of amazed as well, because you have to admire a man who can write this sort of stuff. The Marquis wasn't just a madman - he was a troubled genius as well. When I read the script, I thought some of the things were so disgusting they were funny."
    To counteract the intensity of Phoenix, Michael Caine and Rush did their best to bring some levity to the set. "When we were filming, every day was just like a party," Winslet says. "We had so much fun, and it had to be like that because if we hadn't had a laugh, we'd have been bogged down with a black, heavy story. I was one of very few girls, and I was lucky to be surrounded by men such as Geoffrey and Michael, who paid me some wonderful compliments. It did wonders for the ego. In fact, sometimes Geoffrey got a bit carried away with the marquis' lecherous side and had to be told to stand in the corner."
    Winslet, like her co-stars, is a down-to-earth woman. She has starred in the world's biggest-grossing movie, Titanic, but says she is far prouder of what she calls "my most amazing production yet" - little Mia. "She's absolutely gorgeous. She's just amazing and she's transformed my world," the 25-year-old star says.
    Mia is in the care of Winslet's husband, Jim Threapleton, while we talk, but Winslet is finding it difficult to tear her mind away from her daughter. "Mia's teeny-weeny and she's not very far away," she says as she settles into a comfortable chair in the Terrace Room in London's Dorchester Hotel. "She's just gone for a little walk with her dad. He's just wonderful with her."
    Mia has already had a profound effect on Winslet. "I've changed a lot" she says. "I'm a lot less hectic than I was. I've stopped smoking and I've become a much calmer, softer person. I'm becoming much more squishy and vulnerable and emotional, and I'm sure I'll find it a lot easier to cry on screen. I wanted to be a young mum because I wanted to be able to enjoy my child when I'm young and active, and we're lucky that we can."
    In a way, Winslet had Titanic - the filming of which was not a happy experience for her - to thank for the fact that she is now a blissful mother. When James Cameron's gigantic blockbuster finished filming in Mexico, she vowed she had enough of epics. "I was so tired and I wanted to go and do a film that was totally different and small," she says. "When I did Titanic, there were thousands of people at work every day and it was difficult to remember who everyone was. I wanted to be able to know everyone's name."
    So she chose Hideous Kinky in Morocco, which was where she met Threapleton. "I was the leading lady and he was the 3rd Assistant Director, so we had to be a little bit careful, but to be honest, I didn't really care," she laughs. "I just thought to myself: 'This is the man for me and I'm going to go for it.' It's a tribute to our professionalism that when we got to the end of the shoot, everyone knew that we'd got it together except for Gilles McKinnon, the director. I was so relieved and thrilled that we'd managed to play our cards right".
    The couple were married in November 1998, but Winslet had the travel bug, so she went off to film Holy Smoke in India and Australia. "It satisfied a need in me to travel," she says. "I felt a lot more fulfilled after doing those two films because part of me had always wanted to take a year out and travel, but it never happened because I was working. It was a stroke of luck that they were shot in such beautiful places."
    She returned to England to film Quills and then the World War II Mick Jagger produced thriller, Enigma, which called for some clever camera work because she was five-and-a-half months pregnant. "Rather than have me shoot for a 12 week period, they squashed all my stuff into four weeks so I didn't get too tired and so that I didn't get too big," she says. "It was a brilliant experience and I had so much fun".
    Winslet will next produce and star in the period drama Therese Raquin, which will be filmed in England at Shepperton, just 20 minutes away from home. The actor says she doesn't anticipate traveling very far for the foreseeable future. "It's very important to us that Mia isn't put into a bag and bundled off to film locations," she says. "I don't want to see her anywhere but at home for the next 5 years. Where a film is made has now become very important to us."
    There are no movie star-style airs and graces about Winslet. She is refreshingly natural and down-to-earth, and appears so approachable that strangers have no compunction about coming up and talking to her while she's out shopping. "I'm a normal person so I end up having lovely chats with people at the fruit and vegetable stall and I love it," she says.

January 19: This article is from the Saturday edition of the UK Times:

"Ground Breaker," by Ed Potton
Kate Winslet is just a down-to-earth middle-class girl from Reading, even if the host of big names willing to work with her and two Oscar nominations suggest otherwise --
No other British actress has been borne on the prow of a multibillion-dollar movie. No other British actress has such clout in Hollywood's casting bearpit. No other actress of any nationality has been nominated for two Oscars before turning 23. But nobody seems as determined to prove their unaffected normality as Kate Winslet.
When people suggested that she put down roots in L.A, she answered incredulously, "Why? What for?" While her American peers provide interviewers with the blandest and most guarded of answers, Winslet puts her (size ten) foot in it with charming regularity. Take her comments on portraying a lust-inspiring laundry maid in her new film, Quills, a fictional account of the life of the Marquis de Sade: "I wondered if people would accept me playing a lower-class scrubber. It's normally the sort of role Martine McCutcheon would play."

    Tactless, perhaps, but probably correct. The undeniably middle-class Winslet, one of a six-strong family of actors from Reading, will be forever defined by her Oscar-nominated role as a feisty debutante in Titanic (1997). But her determination to resist the pull of Hollywood showed when, instead of following James Cameron's behemoth with the female lead in Shakespeare in Love, which she was offered, she opted for a small independent picture, Hideous Kinky (1998).
    It was while shooting that film in Marrakesh that she met her husband Jim Threapleton who, as a lowly third assistant director rather than a world-famous leading man, fitted in perfectly with her down-to-earth image. Not that this was the initial source of the attraction: "I saw Jim and thought, `I'm not going to get through this with my legs crossed'."
    Then, of course, there is the rabidly discussed topic of her weight. At the age of 16, Winslet tipped the scales at 13st and was known to her bitchy classmates at Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead as "Blubber". Though she slimmed down for her first screen role in Heavenly Creatures (1994), her fluctuating curves have made headlines ever since.
    As Leonardo DiCaprio, her co-star in Titanic, told her: "Honey, you're always going to have that `I'm a fat girl' thing. Forget it, you're gorgeous." But now, three months after the birth of her first child, Mia, she is resigned once again to some committed dieting. Then she can continue a career that has seen her work with some of cinema's most unconventional directors.
    Heavenly Creatures, a film by the offbeat New Zealander Peter Jackson, saw her play an obsessive, and ultimately homicidal, schoolgirl. The visionary Ang Lee cast her as the romantic Marianne opposite her mentor Emma Thompson's pragmatic Elinor in his zesty adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1995), a performance which won her her first Oscar nomination. The "wonderfully mad" Jane Campion asked her to pee in the desert in Holy Smoke (1999), and she is shortly to appear in Enigma, Michael Apted's codebreaking drama.
    For the moment, though, Winslet is content to play happy families with Mia and Threapleton, now a writer and director, with whom she has set up a production company, Telltale Films. But don't expect any husband-wife collaborations in the near future: "I want him to direct me more than he wants to direct me." Which, for one of the most prized (and, despite her protests, least ordinary) actresses around, has got to be a first.
CV: Kate Winslet
Full name Kate Elizabeth Winslet
Born October 5, 1975, in Reading, Berkshire
Family Her father Roger, mother Sally, and sisters Anna and Beth are all actors. Also has a brother Joss.
Marital status Married Jim Threapleton in November 1998, with whom she has a daughter, Mia
Big break Being cast in Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Finest hour Being nominated for an Oscar for Sense and Sensibility at the age of 20

Caption: British bombshell and box office draw, Kate Winslet

NEW YORK - Since riding to stardom on the wave of box-office giant Titanic, Kate Winslet has been sailing along just fine, both as an actress and in her new role as wife and mother. Winslet spoke to Fox News Channel's Arthel Neville about her new movie Quills, starring Geoffrey Rush and Michael Caine, and the recent talk about why she's trying to shed some pounds.
Q: When you watch this movie, are there any scenes that evoke memories of production - like, How did we pull that off?
Winslet: Oh yes, many. In fact, all of the scenes do. I wonder how we pulled them off. Mr. Geoffrey Rush was always making me laugh. I am surprised we got to the end of any scenes at all, we were always in hysterics.
Q: There is so much going on in that movie. One scene in particular, where you had five people passing a note through about five different secret compartments - how difficult was that to choreograph?
Winslet: Very difficult to choreograph. It took a week to shoot that scene. There were so many people in it, passing it down the line, and everyone was in a different room so it had to be shot in a very specific way.

I have such great memories of that film, and all of the actors were amazing. I felt so in awe of the actors playing the lunatics. You know, they completely became these lunatics, and it was fascinating to watch. And they stayed in character the whole time. It was really impressive.

Q: I'm glad to know you were impressed. I was, too.
I know you don't want to talk about it, but people are making a big thing about the weight thing. You work in a business that's all about image. What made you succumb to going on a diet and getting in shape after the baby?
Winslet: Well, the thing is, I'm not stuck on the idea of being thin to work. That's completely untrue. Unfortunately, something I said was taken completely out of context. All I'm doing is exactly what every woman that's had a baby wants to do, and that is to lose the weight they gained. That's all I'm doing. I gained 50 pounds when I was pregnant. It's nice to get back to being you.
I'll always be the curvy Kate I've been. I am not going to suddenly shrink miraculously to get a job. That's absolutely not the case. I'm afraid the shape is always going to be here to stay.
Q: No, go with the curves. Work those curves.
Winslet: I will. Don't worry. I'm not trying to drop to a size 4. That won't happen. No way. I couldn't.
Apart from anything else, I don't think I'd be happy if I did that. I have never been concerned about whether I'd get a job or not. I was never asked to lose weight for a role I've played. I have always been happy being me, and I would encourage other people, certainly aspiring young actors and actresses, to do the same. Be happy being with who you are. And that's the way that I am.

Q: Absolutely. Are there any particular types of films that you'd like to do that you haven't done or would like to repeat again?
Winslet: Well, I'm always on the hunt for great contemporary roles. You get tired of the corsets after a while. It just seems to me that these female roles in period films are always so strong and challenging that I'm constantly drawn back to them. I am constantly back in the corset. I am reading some scripts right now. We'll wait and see what can happen.
Q: Is there anything we can expect to see you in soon?
Winslet: Well, I'm doing a movie which we were suppose to shoot last year, but then I had (new baby) Mia and that was completely impossible. So we're shooting the movie starting in August. I will be the executive producer in the movie and playing the title role. I am very excited about that and really looking forward to getting into it.
Q: Is this your first time executive producing?
Winslet: Yes, it's my first time. You have to go to all of these meetings about budgets and things like that. It's all complicated but really good fun, and I'm pleased to do it.

January 7: Kate is featured in The News of The World Online Sunday Magazine. The brief article is a re-working of quotes previously published, and it has three pics inside that aren't new to us - the 'official' first baby photo, a wedding photo, and a pic of Kate and Joaquin in Quills. The cover shot is an older pic - but a nice pose from that photo session that's new to me.

"I Was Scared I'd Break My Baby," by Eva Lawrence
    "She's my most amazing production yet," says Kate Winslet of her three-month-old daughter Mia. "She's not very far away from here, she's just gone for a little walk with her dad. She's absolutely gorgeous."
    Mia was born 8lb 9oz on October 12 last year - Kate and hubby Jim Threapleton's first-born - and has transformed their lives. "My mind has been so much on her and I was just feeding her, so it's been sort of bizarre to find myself re-engaging with the real world," adds Kate, 25. "We've been in this little cocoon of baby for a while, since the day that she was born. But I would say that I already feel like a much calmer person, I don't feel so hectic and so desperate for a cigarette. I don't smoke anymore, so I feel I've changed in some ways already, and I'm sure it will continue to change me."
    She says Jim, 26, whom she fell for while filming Hideous Kinky, has taken to fatherhood like a duck to water. "Jim is absolutely brilliant," she beams. "There are times when I look at him with her and I think `God, I wish I could be as brilliant with her as he is'. I'm constantly questioning myself and he's questioning himself all the time as well, but he's just amazing with her. We both didn't know how to handle her in the first few days - she is so precious we didn't want to break her. So every nappy change would take 30 minutes! Now it takes 30 seconds, you get quicker at these things. And actually babies are very robust, they're not as fragile as people think they are."
    Kate's obvious joy at becoming a mum comes as she launches her raunchiest role yet, alongside Sir Michael Caine, in Quills, about the life of the Marquis de Sade. The movie is released on January 19. Kate - Oscar-nominated for her role as Rose in Titanic - plays a laundress who smuggles the Marquis' manuscripts out of the lunatic asylum where he is being held. She also stars in Second World War thriller Enigma, filmed while she was pregnant with Mia and out later this year.
    In the past, filming has taken her to Morocco, Australia and India. But she's determined not to stray far from London now. She adds: "It's very important to us that Mia isn't suddenly bundled into bags and shipped off to every different location like part of the package. I would hate for that to happen. So I'm very fortunate that I am not working for about six months now and when I do work, it's all at home. On the next film, Therese Raquin, that I am doing this year, everything is being shot at Shepperton Studios, which is half an hour from where I live. The location of a film will make a great difference to me. I don't want Mia to be everywhere else apart from home before the age of five. She'll always come first, so Jim and I will take it in turns to work. My hope for Mia is that she'll be able to put up with us as parents! I mean, I don't have any set ideas for her, I just hope that we can bring her up to be a happy, balanced child. If you're asking me whether I would like her to be an actress, probably not. But if she did want to do that, then great, we wouldn't encourage or discourage it, we'd just let her make up her own mind."
    But Kate's fans will be glad to hear that although motherhood may mean fewer movies, it will mean even better acting. She says: "It will probably make me much more squishy and vulnerable and emotional - and I will probably find it a lot easier to cry on screen now." And she adds: "My private life, no matter how poor I was, will always be the most important thing in the world to me. Because if I didn't have that, then I wouldn't have anything and I would just feel a commodity."
    Kate and Jim love being parents to Mia.