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Short Biography

Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born 5 October 1975) is an English actress and occasional singer. She is noted for having played diverse characters over her career, but probably best-known for her critically acclaimed performances as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic, Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sarah Pierce in Little Children, April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road, and Hanna Schmitz in The Reader.

Winslet has been nominated for six Academy Awards and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Reader. She has won awards from the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, as well as being nominated for an Emmy. At the age of 22, she became the youngest actress to receive two Oscar nominations, a milestone she would maintain through her sixth nomination. David Edelstein of New York Magazine hails her as "the best English-speaking film actress of her generation."

Early life

Kate Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, England to Roger John Winslet, a swimming-pool contractor, and Sally Ann Bridges, a barmaid; both of her parents were also actors. Her maternal grandparents, Linda (Plumb) and Archibald Oliver Bridges, founded and operated the Reading Repertory, and her uncle, Robert Bridges, appeared in the original West End production of Oliver! Her sisters are Beth Winslet and Anna Winslet, also actresses.

Winslet, raised as an Anglican, began studying drama at the age of eleven at the Redroofs Theatre School,a co-educational independent school in Maidenhead, Berkshire, where she was head girl and was soon cast as a spokesperson for a cereal in television commercials. Throughout her adolescence, she was severely bullied for being overweight and having exceptionally large feet (which she inherited from her mother).

Career

Winslet`s career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children`s science fiction serial Dark Season in 1991. This was followed by appearances in the made-for-TV movie Anglo-Saxon Attitudes in 1992 and an episode of the medical drama Casualty in 1993, also for the BBC.
Her film career took off with praise and recognition in 1994 when she starred in a joint leading role, as Juliet Hulme in director Peter Jackson`s critically acclaimed Heavenly Creatures, playing a vivacious and imaginative teen who helps her best friend (played by Melanie Lynskey), murder her mother when they are not allowed to be together.
This role was followed by the successful film Sense and Sensibility (co-starring Emma Thompson), which made her well-known, especially in the UK. Winslet became famous world-wide after the 1997 release of Titanic, a massive hit which holds the record as highest-grossing film in history (not accounting for inflation) at more than US$1 billion in box-office worldwide. It went on to win 11 Academy Awards.

Winslet has been regarded as something of a critics` darling, generally receiving positive reviews for every one of her films. Despite Titanic`s success, she has continued making lower-budget, independent films, including Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke!; her roles in these smaller, more artistic films appear to be one of choice?she turned down the lead in Shakespeare in Love to make Hideous Kinky; ironically, she appeared as Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh`s version of Hamlet. She was even c