Kate Elizabeth Winslet, CBE (born 5 October 1975), is an English actress and singer. She was the youngest person to acquire six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader (2008). She has won awards from the Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association among others, and has been nominated twice for an Emmy Award for television acting, winning once for her performance in the 2011 miniseries Mildred Pierce, in which she played the title role. In 2012 she received the Honorary César Award. She is one of the few actresses to have won three of the four major American entertainment awards (EGOT), with her Oscar, Emmy and Grammy wins.
Winslet was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children in 2000. She has been included as a vocalist on some soundtracks of works she has performed in, and the single "What If" from the soundtrack for Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001) was a hit single in several European countries. Winslet has a mezzo-soprano singing voice.
In mid-1996, Winslet began filming James Cameron's Titanic (1997), alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. Gwyneth Paltrow, Claire Danes, and Gabrielle Anwar had been considered for the role; when they turned it down, Winslet campaigned heavily for it. She sent Cameron daily notes from England, and thanks to assistance from her agent Hylda Queally, Cameron eventually invited her to Hollywood for auditions. Cameron described the character as "an Audrey Hepburn type" and was initially uncertain about casting Winslet even after her screen test impressed him. After she screen tested with DiCaprio, Winslet was so thoroughly impressed with him, that she whispered to Cameron, "He's great. Even if you don't pick me, pick him." Winslet sent Cameron a single rose with a card signed "From Your Rose" and lobbied him by phone. "You don't understand!" she pleaded one day when she reached him by mobile phone in his Humvee. "I am Rose! I don't know why you're even seeing anyone else!" Her persistence, as well as her talent, eventually convinced him to cast her in the role.
Cast as the sensitive seventeen-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater, a fictional first-class socialite who survives the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, Winslet's experience was emotionally demanding. "Titanic was totally different and nothing could have prepared me for it. ... We were really scared about the whole adventure. ... Jim [Cameron] is a perfectionist, a real genius at making movies. But there was all this bad press before it came out, and that was really upsetting." Against expectations, the film went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, grossing more than $1.843 billion ($2.8 billion) in box-office receipts worldwide, and transformed Winslet into a commercial movie star. Subsequently, she was nominated for most of the high-profile awards, winning a European Film Award.
Source : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Winslet