I like the best women.

Case in point: Kate Winslet, in this USA Today story. If she didn't smoke, she'd be almost perfect. Excerpts...

Winslet is the only actress to have collected four Oscar nominations — two for supporting (1995's Sense and Sensibility and 2001's Iris) and two for lead (for Titanic and 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) — before age 30...

"She has not been eaten by celebrity," say Jeanine Basinger, the head of film studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Compare her to Gwyneth Paltrow, Oscar winner for 1998's Shakespeare in Love in a role that Winslet turned down, and "the difference in the level of work and projects chosen is quite pronounced. She has defined herself as an actress, not a glamour pinup or a mature sophisticate."

Part of [the decision to make smaller films in the wake of Titanic] was based on advice given to her by her late boyfriend, Stephen Tredre, an actor and screenwriter she met on a BBC sitcom in 1991. He died from bone cancer at age 34 in December 1997, just as Titanic was about to open.

Before signing on for Titanic, "I remember standing in the middle of Knightsbridge on my phone. I had just gotten this mobile phone, and it had been ringing all day with people hassling for answers for this, that and the other, and I was 20 years old. I phoned my boyfriend and said, 'What do I do? What do I do?' And he said, 'What does your heart tell you to do?' "

With those words, Winslet suddenly bursts into tears. "I'm sorry. I'm getting emotional because this person passed away. Go away, Stephen," she says, waving her hands as if shooing a ghost.