What Kate did next

One moment she's posing with former First Lady Hillary Clinton at the US premiere of her new film Finding Neverland - she looks glamorous and behaves as you expect a big Hollywood star to act. Next day, she returns to being a 29-year-old mother-of-two from Reading who just happens to be one of the few English actresses today who deserve the label "movie star".

In the ten years since she made her film debut in Heavenly Creatures, as one of a pair of New Zealand teenagers whose obsession leads to murder, Kate Winslet has established herself as one of the film industry's top actresses. Playing Rose in James Cameron's Titanic helped, although she's ensured she's remembered for more than standing, arms outstretched, on a sinking ship with Leonardo DiCaprio beside her.

Lesser actresses might have opted for the more Hollywood, more mainstream route in the wake of the global success of that film. Winslet did the opposite, rejecting big budget US movie offers for a small budget British picture Hideous Kinky and then the equally off-beat Holy Smoke and Quills.

Her movie credits since then - and a hat-trick of Oscar nominations - have ensured that no-one pigeonholes her. What Kate did next is always a surprise whether it's quirky comedy Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind or spy drama Enigma, biopic Iris or drama The Life Of David Gale.

Despite the hype and the tabloid headlines - prompted by two marriages, two children and endless debate about her size - Winslet retains the good humour and down-to-earth quality that's helped her through the bad times.

Now 29, she's married to film and theatre director Sam Mendes and mother to Mia, coming up to four, and Joe, nearly a year. What's more, she's "truly, truly happy and feeling more centred that I have been for a long time". To push home the point, she adds: "I feel calmer, older and maybe a bit wiser."

Her screen and personal lives collided, in the nicest possible way, in her latest movie Finding Neverland. The film was made in the summer of 2002 when her daughter was not yet two and Joe wasn't even born. Despite saying she wouldn't put on corsets again for another period piece, she changed her mind to play Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, widowed mother of the boy who inspired JM Barrie to write Peter Pan.

Winslet - who played Wendy in a drama school production of Barrie's play - drew parallels with her own life and that of mother-of-four Sylvia.

There wan't a lot of information available about Sylvia but the one thing she did find was that at dinner parties she always insisted her children were there as well.

"This was a pretty outrageous thing back then, because children were supposed to be seen and not heard. I really loved that because it reminded me of my own mother, and of myself too," says Winslet.

"I've always got my children hanging off me, so I loved that insight because it made me feel this was a hands-on mother who would just be herself and not do something in terms of what society dictated she should.

"I drew a lot of inspiration from my mother. I'm one of four children, and my mother did everything with us. I remember all of us being bundled onto buses and going on day trips, and tearing around in fields and adventuring in the same way that the Llewelyn Davies boys do."

She doubts she could have played Sylvia if she hadn't been a parent herself. "It's particularly odd for me watching it again because what I noticed in myself is that the instincts that I had as an actor, with the boys, do mirror my own instincts physically with my own son," she says.

"It's extraordinary to see how I seem to be always physically in touch with the boys in some way, which I really love. I was constantly moving their hair out of their eyes or straightening up their clothes. I like that because it's similar to me. I'm a hands-on parent in those sort of ways. Being a mum in real life made a huge difference to me."

Motherhood has also affected the way she responds to film projects. It makes her pull away from doing things that are particularly violent. "I find that recurring a lot, with scripts that have a lot of violence or anything happening to a child in them, I almost can't finish reading them. I find them too devastating," she says.

To a list of leading men that has included Jim Carrey, Kevin Spacey, Geoffrey Rush, Harvey Keitel and Kenneth Branagh, she can now add Johnny Depp. He plays Barrie, whose relationship with Sylvia remains chaste despite the suspicions of his wife and her mother (Julie Christie).

The characters don't even kiss, which she felt was the right thing for the film. That didn't stop the young actors asking why the pair didn't snog. "But I was always pleased that it wasn't in there, even though some of my girlfriends think I'm mad to do myself out of kissing Johnny Depp," Winslet adds.

Depp was more interested in maintaining his reputation as a practical joker on film sets. He carried this over into the scene where Sylvia and her sons go to dinner at Barrie's house. The situation is tense but the boys find the strange environment amusing. "We knew that there were going to have to be some spontaneous bursts of laughter from them, but how can you tell a group of small children to laugh between this line and that line?," she says.

"So Johnny brought a fart machine to work. He placed it somewhere out of sight and operated it by remote control. There are about six different types of fart on this machine. Throughout the scene he would press the button and there'd be this noise.

"The boys had no idea this was going to happen. I really thought that one of them was going to wet himself, he was laughing so much. So we had this constant stream of explosive giggles and sniggers.

"They just thought that someone was farting, in fact they thought it was Julie Christie. Then I said that actually it was me - and that made them laugh even more."

You can't imagine many American actresses telling this story with quite as much amusement as Winslet, whose honesty and openness is reflected in her performances. Despite the hype, her feet remain firmly on the ground.

In some ways, she feels like pinching herself to make sure all that she's achieved in the past decade is real. But, risking sounding like a cracked record, she keeps saying that she feels incredibly lucky in terms of her career.

"To put it bluntly, when you go home from work and you're straight into changing dirty nappies and pureeing the baby food for the next day, I have that wonderful constant reminder of what my life is really about. It's that part of my life - my home life - that I have to pinch myself about because it's really great," she says.

* Finding Neverland (PG) is now showing in cinemas.

Published: 30/10/2004