Kate Winslet: ‘I feel compelled to play characters that look relatable’

Kate Winslet is reassuring me. ‘Can you see me? Oh, how weird, I’m here.’ I’ve joined our video call but the screen is blank (not ideal when you’re about to interview one of Hollywood’s biggest stars). After what seems like an eternity, but is in reality just a few seconds, I see ‘KW’ pop up. I apologise for the fact that, more than a year in, I’m still not completely used to Zoom.

‘Oh yeah, I’m not used to it, I’m rubbish,’ she tells me cheerfully, shaking her head. Dressed in a crisp white button-down shirt, with just a hint of make-up on and a homely looking ‘Zoom-scape’ complete with a bouquet of lavender peonies just in shot, Kate looks every inch the pro from her home in Sussex. ‘Actually the thing I keep getting wrong is when I take my AirPods out and they disconnect themselves. And then I find myself doing a live talk show, and then I run outside to quickly have a wee and I’ll come back and be like, “Oh no!” And then I’ll be shouting at the computer because the AirPods have broken and I can’t reach my husband and I’m just rubbish, so yeah we’re all still getting used to it aren’t we?’

She talks quickly and entertainingly, a natural storyteller who can make even technical malfunctions sound casually showbiz. Because Kate is the epitome of ‘casually showbiz’. On one hand she plays the pioneering palaeontologist Mary Anning opposite Saoirse Ronan in her latest film, Ammonite, which was released here in March. Kate prepared for the film, set in the 1840s, by living in a small house in Lyme Regis, walking the coastland by day and writing by candlelight at night. And on the other hand, she’s doing the school run for her two sons, taking the dog for a walk and enjoying her newest activity, sewing.

I’m speaking to the actress as she has been signed as a global ambassador for L’Oréal Paris, to talk about the Préférence hair colour. She joins their existing cohort of ambassadors including Dame Helen Mirren, Jane Fonda and Viola Davis, so she’s in excellent company. As well as its cost-effective products, Kate tells me ‘it actually means something to add my voice to an already powerful group of women, who celebrate ageing at any age.’

Further cementing her status as one of the greatest English acting exports, her latest show, Mare of Easttown, is a seven-part miniseries (on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK) that has been met with glowing reviews across the board. A crime drama set in the bleak Easttown, a fictionalised version of a town in Pennsylvania, the story centres around the murder of a teenage girl. Kate, 45, plays detective Mare Sheehan, who is tasked with finding her killer. The series is an incisive look at blue-collar, small-town America. In subsequent episodes, the life of divorcee Mare is exposed: the emotional traumas she herself has faced, including losing her son two years before the story begins.

Quite apart from the acting and storyline – it’s been described as ‘the most gripping drama of the year’ – Mare, in all her unpolished glory, has been dubbed the style icon of the pandemic. Much like her surroundings, the character is unashamedly unglamorous. Dressed for the most part in flannel shirts, drab sweatshirts, plain boots and worn-in jeans, with grown-out roots, blotchy skin and a furrowed brow, Mare appears comfortingly familiar – how many of us have felt, and looked, during the past 14 months.

‘I have to say there’s a myth around famous Hollywood women that they kind of look perfect all the time,’ Kate tells me. ‘For me, playing Mare was almost an opportunity to cut through that myth and show that this is just a real person, a real mother juggling real life. I definitely feel more compelled now to make sure that the characters I play look relatable and accessible.’

Of her character, Kate says, ‘There’s no way this woman cares about what she looks like any more, there are days when she doesn’t even know how she’s going to get through the day because of the grief that she feels. It was crucial that she just couldn’t wear loads of make-up. But we added to my eyebrows at the outer corners because my own eyebrow shape,’ she pauses, with a smile, ‘and I’m going to say it: is ridiculously perfect! I’m not even just saying it as a compliment, I’m saying it as an observation. I got it from my mother, my daughter has them, my sister has them. I don’t pluck them, none of us do. That wasn’t going to work for Mare. It’s ridiculous. It’s too much of a “fashion” shape.’

Kate certainly comes across as relatable, albeit with a few differences. ‘Because I’m taking care of the family, or I’m cooking or I’m juggling, or the dog needs to be walked, I’ve not really had enough time to prepare myself for photo shoots,’ she says. She lives with her husband Edward (known as Ned) Abel Smith, who recently changed his name back from Ned Rocknroll – the name he had when the couple met on Richard Branson’s Necker Island in 2011 (Ned, a businessman, is Branson’s nephew) – along with her children.

Mia Threapleton, 20, is her daughter with her first husband, director Jim Threapleton, and an actor in her own right, who landed her first job in last year’s thriller Shadows without anyone knowing who her mother was. Kate’s son Joe, from her second marriage, to director Sam Mendes, is 17, while Bear, from her relationship with Ned, is seven. ‘Last year, because of Covid protocols, I’d have to do my own hair and make-up for shoots – which I don’t mind doing actually, I quite enjoy doing that – but then suddenly it’s like, “Oh my God, now I’ve got to make myself look good enough to be on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter, how am I going to throw that together?”’ She laughs. ‘These are first-world problems, obviously.’

Technical malfunctions aside, has she enjoyed working remotely? ‘I’ve really appreciated not getting on so many planes. Flying somewhere for one live talk-show interview, for example. It’s been brilliant, I’ve been able to do those things right from home.’ And for Kate, there has been another silver lining to the past year. ‘It’s been quite good in a way to just know that people aren’t judging quite so much, or commenting quite so much, because we’ve all been in the same boat, you know?’

Kate became a global star after her breakthrough role in 1997’s Titanic, but it also made her the subject of cruel tabloid scrutiny, and appalling ‘speculation’ around her weight and diets, which went on throughout her 20s and 30s. She has previously spoken out about overly retouched images that don’t represent her real self, too. ‘In the past year it’s been interesting to feel that temperature shift, with people having less of a commentary on how other people look,’ she adds. Gesturing to herself, she says, ‘Look at me now, I mean I’ve just washed my hair, I have a tiny bit of concealer on and a bit of lip balm and there I am.’ She shrugs her shoulders, grinning. ‘I just didn’t have time, so you just learn to function with less time, don’t you?’

Born in Reading in 1975, Kate is one of four children. Her father was an actor and her mother a nanny. (Kate’s father stayed with her family in lockdown; her mother died in 2017.) She studied at an independent theatre training school in Berkshire, and her talent was spotted early on; her first major screen role came at 15, in the BBC sci-fi series Dark Season, about three teenagers trying to save their classmates from a sinister outsider. By 18 she was making her film debut in Heavenly Creatures, and at 19 Kate landed the role of Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, a performance for which she was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe, and won a Bafta.

Two years later she became a household name as Rose in Titanic, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio – at that point it was the highest-grossing film of all time. In 2009 she became the youngest person ever to receive six Oscar nominations, and won best actress for The Reader, a drama set in 1950s West Germany and co-starring Ralph Fiennes. That same year Kate was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine, and in 2012 she was appointed CBE. And yet, despite being an A-lister and newly appointed L’Oréal Paris global ambassador, she is to this day very low-maintenance. Her skincare routine is purely functional.

‘We can’t deny our age but we can defy our years by doing what we can to keep our skin boosted and hydrated,’ she tells me. ‘I do think anti-ageing treatments are fantastic. If the product says that it helps with fine lines, then it bloody better do its job. I’m not one for huge rituals or multiple products. I just always wash my face with loads of cold water in the morning, because I find that it takes any puffiness down, keeps the pores nice and tight; it also just wakes me up.’

In Mare of Easttown, Kate has four inches of grown-out roots and hair that looks as though it has been roughly chopped with the kitchen scissors. She tells me she coloured her own hair in lockdown but ‘didn’t find it straightforward. I think I’m probably like everyone else, you know you just can’t rush it. I can’t have any interruptions because I’m so terrified I’ll get it wrong.’

Did she have greys she wanted to cover? ‘I don’t have grey hair - yet,’ she emphasises, but grinning, ‘I definitely suffer from browns! When my hair goes just a little too dark at the roots. It’s getting there now, it just brings my mood down. I love feeling that sort of brightness around my face.’ Kate uses the Préférence hair colour in shade 9.1 by L’Oréal Paris. While her colour is perfected, one thing’s for certain, she knows short hair doesn’t suit her.

‘I remember going to the Venice Film Festival a couple of years after Titanic,’ she tells me. ‘I decided I was going to cut my hair really short, I’m sure it was rebelling against that expected Hollywood glam thing.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Ugh. Why did I do that? I hated my short hair! And I had this impossibly black smoky eye, and it just looked awful. It was such a pain because the make-up kept running down my face. I looked like I had swept someone’s chimney and been electrocuted in the process. That’s when I realised the importance of less is more.’

Her look as Rose in Titanic was anything but less is more. ‘The hair took as long as the make-up,’ Kate smiles. ‘And the make-up was iconic really because it was quite cosmetic. I remember being nervous about how cosmetic it was, but it totally worked for that character. It was quite intimidating though. We had to pray that my skin wasn’t going to be bad. It was so much about that flawless…’ she trails off. ‘Luckily my skin was very good on that film. It was a time in my life when my hormones were behaving.’

With such a public career, I ask Kate whether she feels pressure to ‘look the part’. ‘Yes it is pressure actually,’ she admits. ‘I have gone through times of my life where my skin has been bad, that happened to me when I was 30. I suddenly had this hormonal shift and for about a year my skin was really not good at all. That was quite depressing.’ How did she get past it? ‘I had to really focus on my health because it was obviously something internal that was going on.’

Now Kate’s day-to-day involves waking up at 6am each morning, making a cup of tea and breakfast for everyone, and taking her sons to school. Once the school run is over, she takes their dog for a long walk, before coming home to catch up with emails and read scripts. She cooks dinner at the same time as lunch, ‘so I’m not endlessly cooking all evening when the boys are home from school’. Kate’s take on her own wellness and nutrition is refreshing.

‘I just try to stay really healthy,’ she tells me. ‘I mean not obsessively so, just everything in moderation. I don’t believe in diets, but I think as you get older, you do have to pay a little bit more attention to what you put into your body, and I just know what makes me feel well. If I have one too many glasses of rosé, I will pay for it the next day, sadly. It will show on my face. Whereas when I was younger, I could probably get away with a hell of a lot more.’

As for fitness, Kate has a Peloton exercise bike at home, which the whole family shares. She even had a Peloton with her during the filming of Mare of Easttown. ‘Mare has a heavy energy because of everything she’s been through and I would find that in order for me to decompress I would have to give myself a rush of adrenalin. I would get on my bike and I would sweat, yell, and I would cry sometimes, and just get it all out. I know if I don’t exercise, I just feel crap,’ she says. ‘I feel lethargic and less motivated in general.’

Her motivation for keeping fit has changed over the years. ‘For me, exercise is not about the bikini body,’ she explains. ‘I’m 45 and I’ve had three kids, I mean just forget it. It’s funny the things you learn as you get older. I realised last year that this whole idea of exercise – and what it was for – has really changed in me. Exercise is not about looking good, it’s about maintaining my bones and my strength just so I don’t get injured. Because I like to be active and I like to be outside – we’re in the sea a lot.

‘I’ve never had a personal trainer, I just don’t believe in spending lots of money in that regard. I try to do three good spins, 24 kilometres, maybe three times a week. But I don’t beat myself up about it if I just don’t have the time. If I can only find time to do 10 minutes of abs, 10 minutes of arms, a few planks and a couple of downward dogs, then that might be all I can do on that particular day. I no longer try to achieve unstable physical ideals that I perhaps had in my 20s, when I was much more vulnerable and naive.’

And that’s precisely why the world has fallen in love with Kate Winslet yet again – she is kind to herself, refreshingly down-to-earth, and I get the impression she’s lovely at the school gates, too. Looking to the future, and following on from Mare, she’s keen to play roles in which women can see themselves.

‘I just think that’s what audiences want, and that’s what women want. I think we want to see leading actresses playing real parts. Mare almost validates all of those people who don’t have the time in the morning to put on make-up, they just do their teeth and maybe a quick coffee and get out of the door. And it’s OK to be that person and I appreciate that.’ Hollywood star, yes, but Kate is also a thoroughly modern beauty. 

Kate's beauty kit

Préférence hair colour in shade 9.1, £7.99, L’Oréal Paris

Anthelios Fluid Teinte SPF50, £18, La Roche-Posay

Age Perfect Cell Renew Revitalising Day Cream, £24.99, L’Oréal Paris

L’eau d’Issey, £73 for 75ml edp, Issey Miyake

Hairspray by Elnett for Normal Hold & Shine, £6.70, L'Oreal Paris

Kate Winslet is a global ambassador for L’Oréal Paris and the face of L’Oréal Paris Préférence hair colour, available nationwide

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