Thanks loads to Ani for sending us the translation for this interview!

Which woman doesn’t have a problem with her figure?

The 5 Oscar nominations reveal that Kate Winslet is, without any doubt, an extraordinary actress. The conversation about children, diets and wrong role-models shows: First of all she’s an extraordinary woman.

It isn’t the dining room on the Titanic, but rather an elegant tent in the very French garden of the Rodin Museum in Paris. Though, the guests of the evening experience big cinema. On a screen you can see a beautiful woman running for the love of her life – across Paris, hold in Sepia, accompanied by sentimental strings – sinking exhausted full of luck into the arms of the one perfect man. Trésor makes it possible is the advertising message. And Kate Winslet makes it possible that you aren’t in a commercial for the perfume-bestseller out of the house Lancôme but rather in an Jane Austen sequence. The British actress is the new “ambassador” for Trésor and attended personally. Three men in black suits with apricot colored breast pocket handkerchiefs keep guard duty in front of a white gaze-curtain, then the Lancôme president goes o his position and the curtain opens, the music changes on emotions, headlights are going on, guests and applause are getting up and very slowly Hollywood comes down the venerable sand stone steps striding to the tent. Kate Winslet, a grand Dame. Unbelievable attractive gathered in black Valentino. The blond hair is artistic pinned up, diamonds hanging on her ears up to the shoulder. She says something of an “unique and moving moment” – and with the deep timbre of her voice it doesn’t even sound superficial.

Monsieur Menesguen escorted her to her place at the honor table. Peter Lindbergh, whom she had praised honorably effusive before, throws a rose of the decoration to her over the table. She catches it and laughs, takes off her earrings, a cigarette into her mouth and sprays a unique wit.

It’s this moment in which it becomes clear why Kate Winslet is considered to be an actress without attitudes. She’s more than a screen. The next day we’re appointed for an interview. In a splendid suite in the Ritz Hotel. Everything is very distinguished. Like a blinking lies the tobacco for self-shifting beside the accurate expanded Trésor-prospects on a table. The 31-one old actress wears a black trouser and a black pullover, almost no make-up, much politeness and black Rogere Vivier pumps: “I love these shoes, they did it only for me. It’s impossible for me to find elegant shoes. I have size 42. Forty two!”

You don’t see that. But you can’t also imagine that Kate Winslet, who was already nominated for the Oscar aged 21 (for Sense And Sensibility), quarreled long with her putative overweight figure. Today, she isn’t fixed on her figure but rather on her children Mia, 6, and Joe, 3, and husband Sam Mendes. And on the roles she has to represent. She talks the most about education and healthy food.

WELT ONLINE: Doesn’t the topic “shape” put on your nerves sometime?

Kate Winslet: It’s difficult. It’s really important to me but I can also understand if people say: “Can’t this Kate Winslet finally shut up. Thanks, we already know how she thinks about women and shapes.” But therefore the people like it because on the other side nobody speaks about it what’s part of the problem. Whereas something I’m not agreeing with is the way women are shown on the covers of the magazines. I decline this, because just young women, who are very easy to impress and to hurt, are impressed by an image that doesn’t exist. The women on the covers don’t look like they do in real life!”

WELT ONLINE: Are eating disorders an educational problem?

Winslet: You have to tell your children that good food makes them healthy and strong. Changing the topic into the positive way. Because children listen carefully. They hear everything! I had a babysitter who told me she just had lost ten pounds and I said (she sinks her voice very much and speaks through her teeth): “Please be quiet!” My daughter immediately asked what she said (plays again with distributed roles) “What are pounds?” – “It’s money” – “She lost money? Oh, poor thing!”” You know, I had a difficult relation to food when I was 19, 20 years old and it last eternally until I felt pleased in my own skin. It was a very difficult dark way. I absolutely want to save my daughter from this. Until this day I haven’t got to know a woman who says she likes her body! Do you know someone?

WELT ONLINE: No, not really. Possible it results, that you are only pleased with some parts of your body.

Winslet: Isn’t it astonishing that apparently no single woman – no matter which size, no matter which shape – isn’t pleased with her own body?

WELT ONLINE: There we’re again at the education and the question which values you want to mediate.

Winslet: I see it in the same way. Especially teenagers need someone who stands up to their side if they’re confused. God knows, that I don’t make everything right but as a mother it’s my task to show my children their way and to prepare and to give them the confidence to go their way independently.

WELT ONLINE: By the way, values. What would you depose into a save?

Winslet: Actually I have deposed something into a safe somewhere in the world. The diary I wrote when we made Titanic. I don’t want it to get stolen. But I have almost no more Tiffany’s than I’m actually wearing. No Colliers. Very expensive objects make me nervous. It’s nice to wear something beautiful on loan but for myself I don’t want to have something expensive.

WELT ONLINE: And what’s your biggest treasure?

Winslet: My children and my husband.

WELT ONLINE: Isn’t it a reflex to say husband and children? Just because you don’t want to be unfair in front of your husband?

Winslet: [smiles] Yes, it’s actually right. My children are my two biggest treasures. But love is a big feeling with a lot of facets. It can give you a lot of power or it can destroy you. Therefore I like the way how the Lancôme story of Trésor is further told: You can feel a whole frequency range of emotions. And it’s only about love, but love, which balances on a very thin line. One strode only and you fall out of the big luck into the desperation. That’s fascinating about love.

WELT ONLINE: Does the love to and from your children give you security?

Winslet: Sure! I always think: Why did I wait so long? What a waste of time! I really must have been egoistic, I must have been circulated too much around me. Not, that it really was like that, but only with my kids I’ve found my sense and became calm.

Welt Online: With which intentions do you choose your advertising contracts?

Winslet: Trésor is my first one…

WELT ONLINE: Have you chosen it, as your movies, because you were impressed by the script? Or because of the duty?

Winslet: I was impressed by the way how Lancôme presented the project because they didn’t present it as a cosmetic product, but rather as part of a long story. This felt fine, like a small movie. I really thought very much about the role I had to represent. To this adds that I think it’s a pleasure to slip into the footsteps of Isabella Rossellini. And then, if you are also working with Peter Lindbergh, what can go wrong? If I should make a list with ten people who mean the most to me in the world then Peter were certainly on the list. He’s so positive, he finds everything beautiful. I still remember when he showed me the photos he said (again with distributed roles): “Look, how beautiful!” – and I only said: “Peter, that’s surely a beautiful composition but I have my eyes closed.” “Okay, okay, we’ll do it again. But look here, that’s so beautiful, so beautiful.” He loves women and he loves what he does. He loves it, like I do, if things are real.

I show a picture to her in which she looks unusually dissociated. She thinks about it, searches the situation.

Winslet: I think I was cold in the studio, very cold.

WELT ONLINE: What would you advise women to be happy?

Winslet: Advise? That always drives me very nervous. Friends, family, yes, always love them. And I like listening to advices myself. [she thinks about it]. What can I say? [pause]

WELT ONLINE:You don’t have to say anything.

Winslet: I don’t?

WELT ONLINE: No. Who does know spontaneously an answer for everything?

Winslet: At the end of the day it doesn’t work if actors only speak about their jobs and their movies. These times, sad enough, are bygone.People today do expect that actors live in a perfect world, always look great and always have the right answer ready. What, of course isn’t right. Someone who has never been on a cover or someone who has never been in a movie shouldn’t doubt himself in comparison with celebrities who just deliver an image. For me it is the reversed important to live a normal life. I don’t want to stroll in a dream world.

The interview was held by Inga Griese.

Source: WELT ONLINE