An Oscar and seven nominations for Best Actress don't guarantee Hollywood success, just ask Kate Winslet.
"I came up against men who would say to me, 'Why should I like this woman?' I mean, just ridiculous things," Winslet recalled, when the "Titanic" and "Mare of Easttown" heroine sought funding for "Lee," her film on outspoken model-turned-war photographer Lee Miller, as per PEOPLE Magazine.
Building the project took nearly a decade, and she sometimes thought to herself, "Oh my God, how is this ever going to happen? How am I going to keep going?"
Winslet's struggles united her with Miller, who faced pushback when documenting World War II for Vogue. Winslet said the American photojournalist, known for her grim images of concentration camps and Hitler's residence, was initially disregarded as an "ex-cover girl" and had to fight chauvinistic editors and military officers. However, Miller's tenacity encouraged her to finish the picture.
"I swear I could feel Lee pulling the levers, going, 'Come on, come on," the U.K. native, 49, said, noting how “Lee” outgrew her early modeling career and "became so much in her 30s, her 40s and beyond.... That energy she had and the ability she had to live life full-throttle on her terms, to never accept no for an answer and to keep her foot on the gas-I was absolutely guided by that."
"I've yet to master the art of, 'Okay, leave your work behind, and go home and take a bath and whatever.' I never do any of that," the mom of three, who has son Bear, 10, with former Virgin Galactic executive Edward Abel Smith, 46; son Joe, 20, with Sam Mendes; and daughter Mia, 23, with Jim Threapleton, stated.
Winslet and producer Kate Solomon even bunkered together to work at night after filming the movie all day, The Australian reported.
"We'd have to slightly rewrite something to make it work, and then we'd be phoning the actors to tell them that the dialogue was going to change," Winslet, who only slept a few hours a day during the nine-week filming in Hungary, Croatia, and the UK, recalled.
"Then I'd be up at 4 a.m., and I'd go to work, and I'd come home, and we'd do the whole thing again," she added.
The movie consumed her, something her family is relieved to have behind them.
"It consumed my life completely. They're very excited for me to not be talking about Lee Miller anymore," she stated with a smile. "So yeah, it was a big part of all of our lives."
Winslet commented, "Thank God!" her family likes the film. It was exhausting, but Winslet is thankful, given her poor beginnings.
The actress, raised in southern England by Roger, a workaday actor who did odd jobs, and Sandra, a waitress and nanny, debuted in the 1994 thriller “Heavenly Creatures” 30 years ago. She's since become one of her generation's most recognized actors.
"Eighteen-year-old Kate Winslet would not have believed any of this if you even told me it was going to happen," she said. "It's an extraordinary thing that I get to do with my life and an extraordinary thing that I love. But I'm a very unlikely success story."
