Kate Winslet is the photographer Lee Miller at the cinema. The interview

THEand and it is my most personal film. It represents a fundamental chapter of my lifeit’s important that people see it: I go everywhere to present it.” She can’t hold back her enthusiasm, her pride, Kate Winslet as he speaks rapidly, first smiling, then very serious, finally almost sad: so many emotions flow on that beautiful, classic face of his. «There was something about Lee Miller that was so courageous and determined that I had never seen in any of my characters, and in any woman I had known.”

Lee it is in fact the story of the famous photojournalist who documented the Second World War, based on the book by her son, Anthony Penrose, who found 60,000 negatives in the attic after his mother’s death, shots and manuscripts.

Kate Winslet is Lee

Model for Vogue in Paris in the 1920s, star of the artistic avant-garde of those years (he worked with Man Ray, of whom he was also a lover)free and unconventional, Lee Miller leaves for the front and, the first woman in the world, takes thousands of images with her Rolleiflex (she was also the first to enter Dachau after the liberation and immortalize its horrors). At the end of the conflict, however, she is a broken woman, with a heavy baggage of memories and nightmares, from which those repressed since childhood emerge. Lee becomes an alcoholic, destroys herself.

Elegant, in black, a long gold chain around her neck, colored nails, for the collective press conference of Lee at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, Kate even wore makeup. Today, however, in our two-person interview, she is natural, without even a trace of mascara and on her nose she has a pair of large square glasses. She is attentive and focused, but she is constantly moving, waving her hands, raising her arms and raising her eyebrows as I describes Lee Miller and her troubles as a woman and an artist. Then – to lighten things up – he starts chewing peanuts. And he smiles at me.

She never hesitates to slip into the characters’ bodies: in Ammonite – Above a sea wave (on the paleontologist Mary Anning), without even speaking, he conveyed to us a universe of frustrations and passion; and as the series’ detective Murder in Easttown it emanated a silent and incurable pain. It showers such intense emotions on us spectators!
You’re making me laugh – forgive me – because you’re absolutely right! Even now, sitting in front of her, I think I still haven’t managed to shake off the character of Lee. Even when I go to bed at night I have to tell myself: “No, okay, stop!”. You see, in everything I spent seven years with her. When I decide to accept a project I put my all into it.

A seven year long project

Tell me about Lee.
His world is the camera. He learned to use it as a mirror for herself, to see herself inside, and also hide… Above all hide! (waves hands). Wants hide her childhood traumas, not be branded by the past. I had to make her openness, without malice, perceptible, together with her desire to know and understand. I spent seven years with her making this film, which I also produced.

A tiring, even painful experience, in short.
Yes, without a doubt, but while you’re doing it you don’t think about it. Sometimes we actresses subject ourselves to very tough tests: it’s complex, arduous work, you can’t just push a button off to return to living outside the character. That woman becomes a part of you: sometimes you get scared, you feel like you’re overwhelmed by her. Yes, it can be a decidedly excruciating experience.

Lee seems so happy in her Parisian years, she loves freely, uses her body without any prudery, naked and clothed.
She threw herself into life and lived it as she wanted, intolerant of social rules and clichés. In the film it was important not to sensualize Lee even when she is naked, because she always decides what to do. I insisted on this a lot: he had won that freedom hard. As a teenager she suffered from severe depression, was a hypochondriac, obsessed with health, and insecure about her physical appearanceand afraid of a body she couldn’t accept. Only much later did he find some sort of balance.

Kate Winslet, the success of Titanic and the consequences

She too, Kate, after the universal success of Titanic at 22, she was subjected to criticism: “too round”, “too thin”…
Of course it wasn’t a joke, but over the years you learn to accept yourself and not listen to that nonsense. I’ll be 50 in 2025: I’ve realized that vivisecting every part of your body for Hollywood or listening to every comment is just a big waste of time. Life is short and I don’t want to live it that way, I assure you.

It really seems to have succeeded. Where did he find the strength?
Perhaps in the fact that I grew up, in part, before the eyes of half the world, and I never accepted certain conditions. I just want to be myself. Then you learn to cover your ears and not listen to anyone’s opinions, because otherwise you cannot maintain your integrity. I, for example, never read reviews. Absolutely never. I’m only interested in doing a good job. And I care about being a correct person. All this is basic to me. I have a wonderful life with an incredible husband who I love (producer Edward Abel Smith, nephew of Virgin’s Richard Branson, ed), I have three healthy children: in short, a lot to be grateful for… Oh yes, I have to repeat that! As I grew up I also became more tolerant.

The son only discovered after Lee’s death that he had known nothing about his past.
I don’t hide anything from my children. Just nothing. And I also think that too often we forget to ask our parents to tell us about their lives: it’s important, they won’t always remain by our side.

Has she opened up to her children in this sense?
I think I revealed everything to my three boys. The youngest always asks me: “Mom, tell me a story, about when you were 20, about when you met dad… In those moments I thank God: I have a whole collection of films, if they want they can watch their mother at 17 in Creatures of the sky (the Peter Jackson film with which he made his debut in 1994, ed), for example.

Was he 17?
Oh yes, and it seems like yesterday! I can’t believe it one bit. Isn’t that extraordinary? (and bursts out laughing)

The fate of young actresses after MeToo

By the way: it’s from the time of Titanic that we talk to each other, always discussing us women, work, life… Have things improved?
Yes, and they keep changing. Two aspects in particular are different: today we see more films built around female subjects, with women as protagonists. There is a greater balance between the roles. And then – it’s a gigantic detail – Young actresses no longer have to suffer as much scrutiny for their appearance as they did when I first started working in films. She remembers the times too Titanic… It wasn’t a good time for me, and that’s why it makes me happy that younger actresses aren’t being brutally vivisected.

In conclusion, Kate: she has a beautiful family, she produces and shoots the films she wants… What is the next challenge?
I still have a few tricks up my sleeve…

A special card… Which one?
Oh no, I can’t reveal it, it’s a secret! (we both laugh)

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