Kate Elizabeth Winslet, CBE (born 5 October 1975), is an English actress and singer. She was the youngest person to acquire six Academy Awardnominations, 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. Brought up in Berkshire, Winslet studied drama from childhood, and began her career in British television in 1991. She made her film debut in Heavenly Creatures(1994), for which she received her first notable critical praise. She achieved recognition for her subsequent work in a supporting role in Sense and Sensibility (1995) and for her leading role in Titanic (1997), the highest-grossing film in the world at the time.

Since 2000, Winslet's performances have continued to draw positive comments from film critics, and she has been nominated for various awards for her work in such films as Quills (2000), Iris (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), The Reader (2008) andRevolutionary Road (2008). Her performance in the last of these prompted New York magazine critic David Edelstein to describe her as "the best English-speaking film actress of her generation". The romantic comedy The Holiday and the animated film Flushed Away (both 2006) are among the biggest commercial successes of her career.

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.

Born in Reading, Berkshire, Kate Elizabeth Winslet is the second of four children of Sally Anne (née Bridges), a barmaid, and Roger John Winslet, a swimming pool contractor.

Winslet began studying drama at the age of 11 at the Redroofs Theatre School, a co-educational independent school in Maidenhead, Berkshire, where she was head girl. At the age of 12, Winslet appeared in a television advertisement directed by filmmaker Tim Pope for Sugar Puffs cereal. Pope said her naturalism was "there from the start".

In mid-1996, Winslet began filming James Cameron's Titanic (1997), alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.^[23] 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. "Titanicwas 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 ($2.7 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.

Winslet won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Reader (2008). She won two Golden Globe Awards in the same year: Best Actress (Drama) for Revolutionary Road and Best Supporting Actress for The Reader. She has won two BAFTA Awards: Best Actress for The Reader, and Best Supporting Actress for Sense and Sensibility (1995). She has earned a total of six Academy Award nominations, ten Golden Globe nominations, and seven BAFTA nominations.

She has received numerous awards from other organisations, including the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress for Iris (2001) and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for Sense and Sensibility and The Reader. Premiere magazine named her portrayal of Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) as the 81st greatest film performance of all time.

Winslet was selected for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012, but it has not yet been unveiled.