Like many actors, Kate Winslet likes to draw on her own experiences. Unlike most, she has some serious baggage to dip into.

A summer’s day in 2007, on a film-set in suburban Connecticut, an hour outside Manhattan. Surrounded by a film crew, Kate Winslet is about to act a sex scene with Leonardo DiCaprio. Directing the scene is Sam Mendes – who also happens to be Winslet’s husband. It is the first time they have worked together, and she has been worrying about the scene since they began filming several weeks ago.

Winslet wanted to play this part – April Wheeler in a film of Richard Yates’s 1961 suburban-hell novel, Revolutionary Road – so much that she spent two years persuading Mendes, and then DiCaprio, to do the film. Being driven to the set this morning, she kept thinking, would Leo be put off by Sam? Or would he not care? They are old friends, after all. OK, but if Leo’s relaxed, will Sam feel threatened?

She is still thinking about it as they begin the scene. She asks DiCaprio how he feels. ‘Come on, Kate,’ he says. ‘We’re all grown-ups!’

Mendes is watching them impassively, and says, ‘OK, Leo, press your fingers right into her back, hard!’ Winslet thinks, ‘This is too weird,’ but then DiCaprio digs in his fingers, and she grabs him, and she realises: they are not bothered. The only anxious one is her. But is Sam really OK? ‘Grab her bum, Leo!’ Please let this be over soon, she thinks.

Continue reading Kate Winslet: girl interrupted