Kate Winslet – ‘What if I’

Travel back in time with me to 2001. This is Christmas and I am wondering which movies to see, and take the kids and their friends to, so they can have fun. My daughter suggests that we see A Christmas Carol: The Movie.  I told her that we had seen it so many times, the same old Ebenezer Scrooge and his three weird spirits. But they wanted to see this animated version anyway. I looked at the list, bought the tickets and we went inside.

To this day the soundtrack comes to my mind once in a while ‘What if I have never let you go? Would you be the one I used to know?’ It was Kate again. This time, voicing the character of Belle. I enjoyed the movie so much, that we bought it later on DVD.

Who is Kate Winslet?

Most people in America may have never discovered Kate if it weren’t for James Cameron’s Titanic. This is the girl that everyone loved so much that they spent more than US$2 billion to see her at the box office. She is the star feature of Celine Dion’s ‘Heart Will Go On‘.

Kate Elizabeth Winslet CBE was born on October 3, 1975, in Reading, Berkshire, England. She is an English actress who has been the winner of more awards than almost any other actress. She started acting when she was just a child, appearing in many dramas and plays including Alice Adventure in Wonderland, The Witch, The Lion, and The Wardrobe.

In 1991 she made her screen appearance in the BBC TV film Dark Season.  The critics started to watch and promoted her favorably, and by 1995 she was a crowned princess. She won the Screen Actors Guild and British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actress and received nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award in the same category.

Titanic Kate

In 1997 Winslet co-starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Cameron’s epic romance film, Titan. She proved herself to be more than just a star, selling the reality of the role to every fan she ever made. The critics wrote favorably of her.

Yet the making of the Titanic was not a bed of roses for Winslet. She almost drowned, got ill with influenza, suffered from hypothermia, and got bruised all over her arms and knees. As if that wasn’t enough, she almost had no sleep, just about four hours on any day.

However, the price was paid off well. Newsweek applauded Winslet for ‘capturing her character’s zeal with delicacy’ and USA Today considered her to be ‘the film’s prime asset.’ Not at least surprised, Titanic went on to become the highest-grossing film to that point, earning over $2 billion in box office sales worldwide and creating a place for Winslet as a global star.

Most young people could summarize her role in the movies as that independent woman, but in the real world, she has been married three times and divorced twice, bearing one child for each marriage.

Even so, she still makes me sing along with her in that Christmas Carol, ‘What If I’.