LAST Saturday, Kate Winslet was sitting in the garden of the Chateau Marmont hotel just off Sunset Boulevard. A party was going on; Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were there.

Kate had just arrived from the East Coast, one of her kids was sick and she was tired. She wondered aloud whether she’d win a Golden Globe the following evening and concluded that Penelope Cruz would win best supporting actress and either Meryl Streep or Anne Hathway would take the best dramatic actress crown.

She was philosophical about it. She and I have had many such conversations over the years.

Although honoured to be nominated, I sensed this time she wouldn’t have minded winning one, just for a change.

She was a bundle of nerves when she arrived on the red carpet. She took deep breaths as she waited for Leonardo DiCaprio, her leading man in Revolutionary Road, to join her. She was fussing over a lost, borrowed, Chopard diamond ring, soon found.

Leo arrived and they did the first of a series of TV interviews along the red carpet that snaked to the Beverly Hilton’s international ballroom.

Runners from NBC TV called out that the ceremony was due to start in five minutes and Kate and Leo and Beyonce and the gang from Slumdog Millionaire raced through security and into the ballroom.

Kate had barely sat down when the nominations were read out for the evening’s first award, best supporting actress.

Kate won and she hit the stage and delivered her acceptance speech. She thought that was it and wasn’t particularly fussed when a studio executive knocked some wine over her black Yves St Laurent gown.

The thing about the Globes is that you can mingle and tablehop. Stephen Daldry came over and told me he felt, intuitively, that ‘our girl’, Kate, was going to win a second trophy. Kate certainly didn’t think that. ‘When they called my name a second time, it was as if I was having an out-of-body experience,’ she told me later.

‘I was so not prepared for it and my brain couldn’t connect with my mouth and I couldn’t remember my name, let alone Meryl’s or Anne’s or Angelina’s.’

Observing all this in the ballroom, her reactions were genuine: the incomprehension of receiving two Golden Globes on the same night. People at home clearly saw and heard something else.

Backstage, Kate’s husband, Sam Mendes, asked her where she wanted to go. ‘I just won two Golden Globes and I still can’t believe it. Is it true?’ she asked him.

Sam confirmed that it was. He got her parents, Roger and Sally, on the phone, Kate spoke to them and the reality sank in.

I heard her ask if the speech was OK because, she said, she couldn’t remember a word of what she’d said. I just wanted to put that speech into context against the very British reaction to it and to remind people that she won for two towering performances (also recognised by two Bafta best actress nominations).

SOURCE: The Daily Mail, Friday January 16th, Baz Bamigboye