Thursday, February 19, 2009

For once, a post on Kate Winslet that isn't all about her running around buck naked and curvy


Because Time, you see, has an article about her. Excerpts:


If she is fatigued, she never betrays it. An eager, insistent clot of people pushes toward her, and somehow she manages to greet each well-wisher with a fractional recalibration of body language that suggests a wordless surge of elated surprise on her part: Oh, it's you! You're the one I've been most hoping to see, and how wonderful that we share that secret knowledge! To achieve this effect, Winslet must appear, at every minute, to be not only the most interesting person in the room but also the most interested. This is not easy, and she does it very well. People walk away feeling glowy, sated and privileged. She has made them feel that way, and not out of actressy affectation, but because right now, it's her job.



Movie stars have projects built around them; Winslet seeks out movies in which she can serve a director or story by becoming an essential support beam in the film's overall architecture. Movie stars usually want more — more words, more screen time, more veto power; she wants less. When the playwright and screenwriter Doug Wright worked with her on Quills in 2000, he recalls, Winslet told him "with great tact, 'Doug, I'd never say a word against your writing, but this line? This one here? ... I don't have to say it. I can do it with my eyes.' It was the best lesson in screenwriting I've ever been given."


For any actors who may be looking in: This is precisely the right way to start a conversation with any writer...

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