Winslet could finally be a winner at tonight’s Golden Globes, but are her ‘downbeat’ roles what America wants to see? Guy Adams reports from Los Angeles.

Is this Kate Winslet’s year? The actress has received five Oscar nominations and five Golden Globe nominations to date, but never won. In a pincer movement that might see her break her duck, she is up for awards in two separate categories at tonight’s Globes ceremony.

She is the lead actress in both the fifties US suburbs tragi-drama Revolutionary Road, directed by her husband Sam Mendes, and Stephen Daldry’s Nazi-themed The Reader. To double her chances of success, she is nominated in the best supporting role for the latter.

The question is: will judges steer clear of celebrating such downbeat films, when the cinema-goers and TV audiences show signs of rejecting what they see as “worthy” themes?

Continue reading Golden Globes: Kate’s blonde ambition

Kate Winslet has finally become that rare thing: the female celebrity we all genuinely get.

Already one thing is clear: 2009 is going to be Kate Winslet year. This month, she has not one but two films out — Revolutionary Road and The Reader — that have already earned her a pair of Golden Globe nominations. But her extraordinary performances (and, in The Reader, she will take your breath away) are only part of the reason Winslet is having her big moment. She has finally become that rare thing: the female celebrity we all genuinely get. It’s partly that, at 33, she is now in her prime; it’s partly about our expectations (we’ve changed, too); and it’s a lot to do with timing. Women-we-all-get don’t come along that often, because they have to tick all the right boxes and chime with the zeitgeist. Now, for the first time since, oooh, Princess Diana in the mid-1990s, perhaps, KW happens to have hit the spot. Here’s why:

Continue reading Why we love Kate Winslet

Kate Winslet on why she’s finally happy with her figure – and how she’s done it

Kate Winslet wowed everyone with her stunning new figure when she squeezed in to a Herve Leger bandage dress at a recent premiere in New York.

But the star has revealed her fantastic new physique was honed by shunning the gym and giving up her regular swims to do a pilates DVD at home in front of the TV.

‘I just don’t have the time or the inclination to go out and work up a sweat,’ she says.  ‘I don’t have a trainer or anyone bossing me about.  I prefer to do my own thing, in private, with some hand weights.  I’ve stopped all diet and exercise fads.  There’s just no point’.

Continue reading ‘I don’t want my looks to be an issue’

MOVIE star Eva Mendes is one of Hollywood’s most sultry actresses – yet she admits she’s envious of Kate Winslet.

However, the 34-year-old Hitch star says it’s not Kate’s perfect size 12 physique she covets – but the film parts she gets.

Eva says: ‘I would steal Kate Winslet’s roles. All her roles. Don’t talk to me about it because she can do no wrong in my eyes.’  Eva says she greatly admires the acting skills of the 33-year-old British star, who has been nominated for an Oscar five times and is tipped for two more nominations for her roles in The Reader and Revolutionary Road, in which she acts with Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time since 1997’s Titanic.

‘Not only is she the most amazing actress in the entire world, she’s nude in a lot of her films which shows she’s just fearless.’  Eva added. ‘Her choices are impeccable. She literally can do anything. If she can just give me two of her roles, I’d be happy.’

Eva, who is dating producer George Gargurevich and appearing in new movie The Spirit, is obviously a fan of Brits.

She recently revealed that she has a crush on Oasis star Liam Gallagher and loves comic Benny Hill.

SOURCE:  Mail on Sunday, Sunday January 4th 2009;  Katie Nicholl