Kate Winslet has been keeping a low profile for the past year, but now she’s back in the limelight. ‘I was in hiding a little bit, just doing family stuff and very little work.
‘To be honest, I felt so overexposed this time last year with the Golden Globes and the Oscar,’ she told me at this year’s Golden Globes ceremony in Beverly Hills, where she was wearing a blue YSL off-the-shoulder gown.
‘It was fantastic and everything, but I was sick of me, let alone what other people must have felt.’
It’s awards season, and because Kate collected various best actress (and best supporting) statuettes for her performances in The Reader and Revolutionary Road last year, she is being called upon to return the favour at many of this year’s ceremonies.
Last Sunday’s Hollywood Foreign Press Association bash was the first. She handed over the Golden Globe to Jeff Bridges for his brilliant turn as an alcoholic country and western singer in Crazy Heart.
She’ll perform similar duties at the Oscars in March. Before that, though, it’s the Orange British Academy Film Awards, where she’ll do the honours for one of the best actor nominees announced yesterday. They include Bridges, George Clooney for Up In The Air, Colin Firth for A Single Man, Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker and Andy Serkis for Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll.
After the awards shows are over, Kate’s stepping in front of the cameras, taking the title role in a mini-series for HBO based on James M. Cain’s novel Mildred Pierce, which Todd Haynes will direct with his long-time colleague Christine Vachon producing.
‘We’re doing it from the book, not the film version with Joan Crawford. The film was very different from Cain’s book,’ Kate told me.
‘It’s such a deliciously meaty role and we cover a lot of ground, with Mildred raising her two girls during the Depression era. She runs her own business and, of course, there are men. And because it’s a mini-series for HBO we can really explore the characters and go into the kind of things you could only hint at when the film was made in 1945.‘
Other roles are still being cast but I can reveal that Guy Pearce is in talks for the part of the leading man. Pearce just completed portraying Edward VIII, opposite Colin Firth as George VI, in The King’s Speech.
Evan Rachel Wood (she was in Across The Universe) will probably play Veda, Mildred’s manipulative monster of a daughter. Elle Fanning has been in talks about playing Veda in the early segments of the miniseries, which will begin filming in mid-March.
SOURCE: www.dailymail.co.uk (scroll down past Spice Girls article)
