Kate Winslet, from Heavenly Creatures to Goodbye June

Few actors have moved as easily between period drama, blockbusters and prestige television as Kate Winslet. Her career, laid out on the Kate Winslet timeline, begins in Reading, where she was born in 1975 to actor parents, and now includes a turn behind the camera.

Early roles

Her first screen role came in 1991 in the BBC children's serial Dark Season. Three years later she played Juliet Hulme in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, based on a real New Zealand murder case. The part brought her international attention.

Sense and Sensibility

In 1995 she played Marianne Dashwood in Ang Lee's film of the Jane Austen novel. The role earned her a first Oscar nomination and a BAFTA award, and it set the pattern for a run of acclaimed period parts that followed, including Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.

Titanic

In 1997 she played Rose DeWitt Bukater opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. The film became the highest-grossing of its time and made her a global star. Her Best Actress nomination followed, and at 22 she was the youngest person to have earned two acting nominations.

The Reader and the Oscar

In 2008 she appeared in both Revolutionary Road and The Reader, and both films won her Golden Globes. In 2009 she won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Hanna Schmitz in The Reader, on her sixth nomination.

Television and directing

She won an Emmy in 2011 for the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, and another for Mare of Easttown after it premiered in 2021. In 2025 she directed her first feature, Goodbye June, a family drama written by her son Joe Anders and released by Netflix.