Kate Winslet's winning ways

Feb 5 2009 By Mike Davies

Mike Davies talks to Kate Winslet about her double dramatic triumph.

After releasing four films in 2006, Reading-born actress Kate Winslet took a lengthy sabbatical to spend time with her two kids, the English narration for The Fox & The Child her only credit during the past two years. She’s back with a vengeance though, with two award-magnet performances in the same month.

In an incredible triumph, she’s already won Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actress as Hanna Schmitz in Stephen Daldry’s film of German author Bernhard Schlink’s bestseller, The Reader and, beating off Meryl Streep, Best Actress for April Wheeler in husband Sam Mendes’ adaptation of Richard Yates’ 60s America classic Revolutionary Road.

There is no chance of doing the double at the Oscars, however, as she has only received a nomination for The Reader – though this time her performance has been bumped up to Best Actress, where she will again face off against Meryl.

In the first she plays a middle-aged former SS concentration camp guard on trial for her part in the death of Jewish prisoners, in the second a restless, frustrated suburban housewife in an imploding marriage. Both are intensely demanding roles.

With just five months of breathing space between them it was, she admits, a daunting experience to get inside their heads.

“I’m still coming to terms with the fact that I got to play April and Hanna in one year, let alone in my lifetime. I’m very aware of how rare an opportunity that is, but as much as I love acting I’m so often just terrified by it and they really were very challenging.

“When it came to April, she is incredibly complex and it took me a while to fully understand her,” she continues.

“The hardest thing was making a specific choice to not have her as mannered as she is in the book where she’s very highly strung and sometimes hysterical. I knew that while I had to create that for her emotionally, it was more important to do it from an internal place as opposed to the endless ringing of hwands Yates talks about. That’s just not my own personal taste, and if I watch an actor doing something like that, at a certain point you start to tune out.

So, to have an audience understand who she was, all those things had to come from a place that was grounded, as opposed to being tics and manners and twitches. I didn’t think it was going to be as rich if I was going to make it more emotional. And perhaps not as disturbing either. So, it was a real challenge.”

However, while neither woman’s action are exactly sympathetic, despite having devoured The Reader in a day when she was 27, and being both mesmerised and conflicted by the character, Winslet confesses she found it easier to be understanding of April than Hanna.

“It’s not natural to sympathise with an SS guard, but during the trial scenes I was able to unlock a little of how incapable Hanna is of