5:43PM, Jan 22, 2009
After the monstrous success of Titanic, British actress Winslet has become as much a household name in the States as in the UK.
Born: 5th October 1975
Where: Reading, Berkshire, UK
The five-times Oscar-nominated star is now firmly on the Hollywood A-list after critically-applauded appearances in movies ranging from the all-conquering Titanic to the post-Holocaust drama The Reader.
Off screen, she endured a headline hitting divorce but recovered, ,married Oscar-winning Brit director Sam Mendes and now enjoys a successful career.
Oscar-nominated for Iris, in which she played Iris Murdoch, she has impressed critics with performances in the likes of Little Children and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for which she was also nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
The daughter of actors, her grandparents ran the Reading Repertory Theatre, and uncle Robert Bridges was a fixture in London theatres.
She began studying drama at an early age and got her first professional job at 11, opposite the Honey Monster in an advert for cereal.
Winslet's first big break came at age 17, when she was cast as an obsessive adolescent in Heavenly Creatures.
"While I like my work, I love my family and know which would come first if I had to choose. It would be no contest."
The film, directed by The Lord of the Rings maestro Peter Jackson, was based on the true story of two fantasy-gripped young girls.
Next, she played Marianne Dashwood in Sense & Sensibility and was rewarded with both a British Academy Award and a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.
With the role of Rose in 1997's Titanic, Winslet truly hit the big time, and a Best Actress nomination came her way, making her the youngest actress ever to receive two Academy nods.
The forgettable Hideous Kinky, Marquise De Sade romp Quills and WWII thriller Enigma followed, before Winslet appeared as Bitsey Bloom, a reporter investigating the case of a death row inmate in The Life of David Gale.
In 2004, she starred opposite Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland and landed the lead role in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, both of which have lead her to a Golden Globe nomination, two 2005 Bafta nomination and an Oscar nomination.
The following year she starred as the slatternly Tula in John Turturro's musical comedy Romance & Cigarettes.
In 2006, she appeared in the critically acclaimed Little Children, a disturbing drama about the dark underbelly of American suburbia.
Winslet appeared alongside Jude Law and Sean Penn in the American drama All The President's Men and provided the voice for Rita in the CGI romp Flushed Away.
Again in 2006, Winslet starred in the rom-com The Holiday alongside an all-star cast of Jack Black, Jude Law and Cameron Diaz.
Then in 2008 she appeared in Revolutionary Road and The Reader, a romantic war drama, where she plays a 36-year old tram conductor, who takes upon a relationship with a teenage boy.
