She has always been proud of what she sees as her working class roots and loves to imply she has her feet firmly on the ground.

Kate Winslet told how she was shunning the ‘movie star existence’ and resisting the temptation to hire nannies and chefs.

But it seems the Oscar-winning actress who likes to refer to herself as ‘just a girl from Reading’ has succumbed to the pressures of combining a busy career and motherhood.

Last night a spokesman for Miss Winslet told the Mail that she did now have some help with the children.

‘She has a part-time nanny,’ the spokesman said.

She added that Miss Winslet and her husband Sam Mendes had previously been looking after their son, Joe, five, and the actress’s daughter, Mia, eight, without help.

‘Kate has never said that she did not have a nanny at a time when she did have a nanny,’ she said.

The news about Miss Winslet’s part-time nanny comes after Hello magazine published an interview with her, in which she claimed she did not have a ‘perfect life’.

‘There are things I could implement within my life that would probably make it easier,’ she said.

‘But I deliberately don’t do it, because if I did, I would be living that movie star existence that I really try and resist.

‘I mean, it’s very tempting to have a nanny and live in a gated community and have a chef – I’d love to have a few dinners cooked for me.

‘But I don’t want that for my children.’

But while Miss Winslet, 33, may well slave away over the kitchen stove, she and Mendes, 43, have not always brought up their children without a helping hand.

The actress, who was previously married to director Jim Threapleton, told how she first hired a nanny when Mia, her daughter with Threapleton, was a baby.

‘I didn’t get a nanny until she was nine months old,’ she said in 2002.

‘It’s absolutely exhausting, but I wanted to experience all those things.’

And she spoke of her ‘heart-break’ at having to leave her daughter behind and go to work.

‘She knows when I’m going to work, and her lip starts to quiver when she waves bye-bye,’ she said.

Miss Winslet also spoke about the friendly relationship she had with a nanny in 2004.

‘She’s young, she’s great,’ she said. ‘We have a laugh, we get on well.’ But she added that she always rushed home from film sets to spend quality time with her daughter.

‘I was tearing my wig off at the end of the day, getting into the car and haring back home in time to do Mia’s bath and stories at bedtime,’ she explained.

‘I don’t want her to look back on her childhood and remember doing everything with a nanny.’

The actress has also hired nannies with Mendes to look after Mia and Joe.

‘We have a nanny, but we always take it in turns to work so there’s always one parent at home when the other is out in the day,’ she said in 2006.

In January last year it was reported that Miss Winslet and Mendes had another childminder on trial.

‘After a three-week trial, Kate advised the nanny they would not be needing her,’ a spokesman confirmed at the time.

SOURCE:  www.dailymail.co.uk