Winslet finds her way back to Hollywood

The last time Kate Winslet played an American in a movie, it went on to become Hollywood's biggest blockbuster ever. Since that "Titanic" success, she spent six years defying expectations that she would "go Hollywood" and do big commercial films.

So it's notable that she's playing an American again, this time as hard-nosed journalist Bitsey Bloom in the commercial Hollywood film "The Life of David Gale," starring Kevin Spacey.

"I knew it would be an enormous departure for me," says the British actress, pointing out that she's done her share of period pieces.

In this movie, Winslet leaves Petticoat Junction behind to wear jeans in modern-day Texas, where her character is assigned to interview a death-row inmate, just days from execution, who had been an activist against capital punishment. Convicted of raping and killing a fellow activist, he ostensibly wants to convince her he's innocent and to save his life.

The 27-year-old actress says she thought the script was clever and approached director Alan Parker about doing the movie since she was eager to play "a contemporary American woman as strong as Bitsey."

Of course, the Philadelphia socialite she played in "Titanic," Rose, was willful, too. But that was 1912.

"Still to this day, actually, I can't believe that I'm in that movie. It was extraordinary, and it was a phenomenon, and an epic piece . . . and I'm in it, and I'm just Kate from Reading," says the three-time Oscar nominee, who co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio in the film that grossed $600 million domestically and $1.2 billion internationally. "I feel very lucky to have been in that film."

"But after 'Titanic' it would have been completely foolish for me to go and try and top that. I'm an English girl, I've always loved England, I've never felt the desire to leave it for any particular reason. And whilst I'm ambitious and care very much about what I do, I'm not competitive. I also don't want to act every day of my life. . . . So it was important to me after 'Titanic' to just remind myself of why it was that I was acting in the first place, which is of course because I love it."

She concedes that she "did kind of run away" to do "Hideous Kinky," in which she played a hippie mother who takes her two young daughters on a spiritual trek to Marrakesh.

She "adored" the script and the character, and that's her criterion for picking projects.

"Even when I did 'Titanic' there was really no agenda. I wasn't thinking, 'OK, this is my big break. I'm going to do a great big American movie.' I just loved the script, and I loved the character. Maybe I was naive but I had no idea it was going to be that big."

Winslet's subsequent roles included another spiritually adrift woman in "Holy Smoke," a laundress who helps the imprisoned Marquis de Sade smuggle out his work in "Quills," and the young novelist Iris Murdoch in "Iris," for which she earned her third Academy Award nomination (as supporting actress, after ones for supporting actress in "Sense and Sensibility" and lead actress in "Titanic").

Only twice have two actresses been nominated for playing the same person in the same film -- and both times involved Winslet: she played the younger incarnation of Gloria Stuart in "Titanic" and of Judi Dench in "Iris."

And if that isn't enough fun trivia: Winslet also has won a Grammy (in 2000, for best spoken-word album for children, "Listen to the Storyteller") and had a hit record in the United Kingdom that peaked at No. 6 (a single titled "What If?" from an animated version of "A Christmas Carol" that she voiced in 2001).

Actress Laura Linney, who says she and Winslet became fast friends while making "David Gale," thinks Winslet's role choices demonstrate she's not simply trying to forge a career.

"She's a real actor," Linney says. "She has a spirit and a freshness and a courageousness about her that is sort of fueled by really wonderful, pure self-esteem."

"Gale" director Alan Parker notes that personal considerations weighed at least as heavily as professional ones for Winslet.

"She chose to stay at home," he says. "She had her baby and wanted to make British films."

Winslet's daughter, Mia, was born in October 2000. But by December 2001, Winslet divorced husband James Threapleton, an assistant director she met during the 1997 filming of "Hideous Kinky," and the split led to what she felt was some harsh tabloid coverage at home.

"It was quite tough on me," she says. "I was always held up as, you know, 'Our Kate,' 'Down-to-earth, British Rose,' blah-blah-blah, and they'd always really kind of been very supportive and celebrated the fact that I was a young British actress who was doing well for herself."

Despite the Fleet Street flak, she's still doing well for herself.

"I have an incredible relationship with my child," she says, adding that she's happily paired now with Sam Mendes, who won a directing Oscar for 1999's "American Beauty."

She also has two more films in the offing -- "Neverland," about "Peter Pan" author J.M. Barrie, and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," in which she co-stars with Jim Carrey as a couple trying to rescue their relationship by having their bad memories erased.

To preserve real-life memories, Winslet takes Polaroids on each picture she does. She recently was cataloging them and thought: "God, I've worked with some really special people!"

"And it just reminded me of how incredibly blessed I've been," says Winslet, who made her feature film debut in Peter Jackson's 1994 film "Heavenly Creatures."

Her maternal grandparents founded the Reading Repertory in England, and both her parents were actors. Did she ever, even for a fleeting second, think about doing something besides acting?

"'Fraid not," she says instantly. "There was simply no way out. It was decided before I think I'd even been thought of."

She has two sisters who also act, but her one brother, who's in college, has no intention of joining the family business.

"Which is a great relief," she cracks. "Fantastic. Because it means there's a family member who has a lot of other things to talk about than acting."

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