Kate Winslet

Kate Winslet is an English actress whose career has included acclaimed work in independent film, period drama, major studio productions and television. Born Kate Elizabeth Winslet on 5 October 1975 in Reading, Berkshire, she grew up in a family connected to performance; her parents had acting backgrounds and her maternal grandparents ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company. Winslet trained at the Redroofs Theatre School and began screen work as a teenager.

Winslet's first television appearance came in the British children's science-fiction series Dark Season in 1991. She made her film debut in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures in 1994, playing Juliet Hulme in a dramatization of the Parker-Hulme murder case. The performance brought her early critical attention. She followed it with Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, in which she played Marianne Dashwood and won a BAFTA Award for supporting actress.

Her global breakthrough came with James Cameron's Titanic in 1997. As Rose DeWitt Bukater, Winslet became one of the central faces of a film that became, at the time, the highest-grossing movie in history. Rather than move only into large-scale studio films, she subsequently chose a range of character-led projects, including Quills and Iris, developing a reputation for emotionally direct performances in historical and literary material.

In 2004 Winslet starred opposite Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a contemporary romantic science-fiction drama that broadened perceptions of her range. She continued with major roles in Finding Neverland, Little Children, The Holiday and Revolutionary Road. In 2008 she starred in The Reader as Hanna Schmitz, a performance that won her the Academy Award for Best Actress as well as BAFTA and Golden Globe recognition.