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Kate Winslet climbs to the top of the Hollywood A-list

Kate Winslet takes her place this weekend among the elite of Hollywood history. Her stock has never been higher, following her two Golden Globe nominations as best actress in Revolutionary Road and best supporting actress in The Reader. Glamorous images of her in a sleek Hervé Léger dress on the red carpet have served to confirm her position as the most successful British film actress for two or three generations and the most bankable in Hollywood.'She is probably the most garlanded actress there is,' said Mike Goodridge, vice-president of the Hollywood Press Association and a man with a vote in the Globes, which will be presented on 11 January. 'She has five Oscar nominations and probably another two this time and yet she is only 33. It is pretty good going.' Not since Elizabeth Taylor has a British actress had so much clout in the film-making industry. Her position is rivalled only by that of the Australian Cate Blanchett, who makes more films.With two tough roles in films coming out in the next month, it has been the most intense period of work in Winslet's life. The actress usually paces her work around the directing schedule of her husband, Sam Mendes, and the needs of her two children, Mia and Joe, and had become accustomed to some breathing space. This year has been very different, but it has paid off.Goodridge, also the United States editor of Screen International, adds that while Winslet has kept a presence on the Hollywood casting wishlist since her success with Titanic in 1997, she has now joined an 'absolute A-list'. 'Every director wants to work with Kate Winslet. She is thought of as a great actress. But she made a conscious decision to pursue non-Hollywood style movies,' he said.The move away from the mainstream has served Winslet well. While building on the big profile that came with the popularity of Titanic, she has escaped the restrictions of stardom to make a risky series of choices. Her acclaimed performance as the young Iris Murdoch in Iris in 2001, was followed by an Oscar-nominated role in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004.'She's shaken off the burden of being in Titanic much more successfully than her co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio,' said Gavin Smith, editor of the American magazine Film Comment. 'She got out from under the shadow of that right away and has been able to break through and take on roles in which she is convincing as a grown-up person.' For Smith, DiCaprio, who is reunited with Winslet as her husband in Revolutionary Road, is still struggling with that process. Winslet first came to the public's attention in Peter Jackson's disturbing psycho-drama Heavenly Creatures, telling the story of two New Zealand schoolgirls whose passionate relationship drives them to commit murder. Then a touching performance as Marianne Dashwood opposite Emma Thompson in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, bonnetted her up nicely and put her in line for the role as Rose in Titanic. Winslet's choices since then have been inspired, Goodridge believes. They have given her the creative cutting edge. 'She may not be enough to "open a movie", something which no actor or actress can really do any more, but she has great prestige. Only Reese Witherspoon has that power and even then only in a romantic comedy,' he said. 'Nicole Kidman has fallen away a little with the critical reception for Baz Luhrmann's Australia and, anyway, she is 10 years older than Kate.'Winslet's rival Golden Globe contenders, Angelina Jolie and Anne Hathaway, are perhaps the only actresses alongside her at the top of the A-list of female talent. Her friend Pippa Harris, co-founder with Mendes of Neal Street Productions, believes she has made brilliant and brave choices. 'She is very good at choosing a script. She has got this incredibly wise head and is very considered. Her oldest friends say she has always been like that.'Revolutionary Road, released in the UK on 30 January, is the first film she has made with Mendes. The couple, who live in New York and the Cotswolds with their son and Winslet's daughter by her first marriage, to director Jim Threapleton, have had to break a family rule to do it. Until this project they have ensured that only one of them worked at a time.In an interview with The Observer this weekend, Mendes admits that he learned a lot about his wife by directing her: 'A surprising amount for somebody I know very, very well. You watch this face that you think you know and expression pass across it that you've never seen. It's very... exciting,' he explains.For Harris, it is the strength of their marriage that has allowed them to tackle the bleak subject matter of Revolutionary Road, in which Winslet plays a disaffected housewife in 1950s America. 'Not many couples would be able to do it, it is pretty explosive stuff,' she said.The actress has been a contender for the Golden Globes five times, but so far has failed to win. The awards ceremony on 11 January could break the trend. Her nomination for best supporting actress in director Stephen Daldry's The Reader, released on 2 January, comes in recognition of her portrayal of a former concentration camp guard who has an affair with a teenager. The nude scenes in the film have caused some consternation in America. Winslet has defended them, saying: 'No one likes doing them. No one gets a kick out of doing them. It's very difficult but as long as there's a justifiable reason for those scenes to be part of the film, then I can make my peace with them.'The influential New York critic Charlie Finch, has also raised doubts about the tone of the film. At a private screening hosted by Daldry, Finch accused him of creating a 'dishonest and manipulative' vision of Nazi war crimes.On the question of whether Winslet has reinvented herself with a new fitness regime and new look to match her figure-hugging 'body con' dress, her friend Harris is sceptical. 'Kate looked fantastic, yes, but she is not at all starry and never will be. She is still the kind of person you would want to go to the pub with.'British BellesVivien Leigh (1913-1967) Came to attention with London stage appearances, then scooped the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind.Ida Lupino (1918-1995) Actress and music hall star who became a powerful Hollywood director.Deborah Kerr (1921-2007) Personified the English woman and starred in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, From Here to Eternity and The King and I.Angela Lansbury (1925-) Granddaughter of George Lansbury, she starred in music hall, westerns and her own mystery series Murder She Wrote.Dame Julie Andrews (1935-) Became the icon of feminine gentility as Mary Poppins and Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Diversified appearing in 10, Victor/Victoria and Shrek.Dame Elizabeth Taylor (1932-): Distinguished herself in childhood roles, appearing in National Velvet, and then adult roles in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Giant, Suddenly Last Summer and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?Jane Seymour (1951-) Star of the long-running American series Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman.Catherine Zeta Jones (1969-) Went from television's Darling Buds of May to become Hollywood royalty by marrying Michael Douglas. Critical plaudits for her role in Chicago.Keira Knightley (1985-) Daughter of writer Sharman Macdonald, she was in the Pirates of the Caribbean series and was praised in Atonement.Kate WinsletAwards and prizesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Published: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:04:55 GMT - Source: Guardian.Co.Uk - Read the article

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Barack won in Washington, but Hillary is the victor in Hollywood

There are many disconcerting moments in the new Keanu Reeves sci-fi action thriller The Day the Earth Stood Still; in fact, the film is almost entirely composed of such moments. But its most discomfiting aspect is the fact that the US government is represented by a badass secretary of defence, played by Kathy Bates, who does not believe in making nice with the incoming aliens, but rather kicking their little green butts. Very clearly, Bates's character is influenced by Hillary Clinton's tough act - the act she displayed in her notorious 3am Phonecall TV campaign and the interview in which she made a point of declaring that if the Iranians launched a nuclear attack on Israel, a Hillary-led government "would obliterate them".Kathy Bates's character in the film was conceived at a time when it was pretty likely Hillary would win the Democratic nomination, and therefore very possibly the presidency, but the fact that the president is not shown in the movie - he is spoken to on the phone, but his voice is not heard - itself acknowledges the possibility that Barack Obama would win. Because Hollywood has always been very reluctant to imagine an African-American in the White House. As Mark Ravenhill notes in a recent column, the black presidents in the movies are either in sci-fi or comedy, such as Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact or Chris Rock in Head of State, which suggests the idea is only appropriate for something far-fetched or absurd. (On TV, however, Dennis Haysbert was a dignified African-American president in 24.)The Hillary-a-like defence secretary in The Day the Earth Stood Still is a queasy throwback to the 90s, when we saw loads of Bill Clinton facsimiles on the big screen: attractive-ish, middle-aged white commanders-in-chief who were very much in the Bill mould, and flatteringly cast in romantic action-hero roles. There was Michael Douglas in The American President, Harrison Ford in Air Force One, Bill Pullman in Independence Day, John Travolta in Primary Colors and Jeff Bridges in The Contender. There was no Dubya figure that I can recall in the noughties, though there was of course a real, and rather underpowered Dubya in Oliver Stone's respectful film of the same name. So will there be a surge of Obamas in the cinema? Maybe. But I suspect that there are plenty of people in Hollywood who will think that whatever's happened in the real world, in commercial and entertainment terms, a black president is still too "urban" an idea. (Notoriously, the relative commercial failure of HBO's magnificent TV show The Wire is attributed to its predominantly African-American cast - despite the endorsement of Barack Obama, who gave a newspaper interview saying that it was the best show on American television.)I think there will be a new indirectness, even coyness, and the "president" will, just as in The Day the Earth Stood Still, be imagined offscreen but with an onscreen representative, a representative more amenable to conventional Hollywood drama, and this representative will be a Hillary-a-like. It will be this subordinate Hillary-a-like who will stride into top-level meetings with the military top brass, and who will be ushered into sleek black limos, surrounded by security guards in black suits. It will be the Hillary-a-like who will tell her colleagues and us, the audience, what the president is thinking. She will be a government figure whose existence is an acknowledgment of the progressive times: a tough, capable, hawkish woman with a tender, even vulnerable side. We have already had one of these, in fact, in the form of Meryl Streep's dragon-lady CIA leader in the war-on-terror drama Rendition.Barack Obama might have won in Washington, but I have a sinking feeling Hillary is going to win big in Hollywood ...Science fiction and fantasyHillary Clintonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Published: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:32:00 GMT - Source: Guardian.Co.Uk - Read the article

Europe

Thousands ordered to flee homes as wildfires sweep into Los Angeles

Wildfires destroyed hundreds of homes in southern California yesterday, closing major roads and forcing thousands of residents to escape to safety. The flames swept across a trailer park in Los Angeles, scorching trees and beating back firefighters.'We have almost total devastation in the mobile park,' said Los Angeles Fire Steve Ruda. 'I can't even read the street names because the signs are melting.'Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles, a day after 111 homes were burnt to the ground in the wealthy community of Montecito north-west of the city. Celebrities such as Michael Douglas and Oprah Winfrey own houses there.The Los Angeles blaze threatened at least 1,000 properties, according to officials. They estimated some 10,000 people were under orders to evacuate. One resident was said to be in a serious condition and four firefighters were treated for minor injuries. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said dry winds from the desert had fanned the fires in the district of Sylmar that had destroyed more homes than any other in the past decade. He urged residents in the area to leave quickly if they were in harm's way. 'This fire can be on you at a moment's notice,' he said.The fires raged on both sides of Interstate 5, the main freeway connecting Los Angeles with the north, and the path of transmission lines bringing power to the city. Two of the five main lines had to be taken down because of damage to a converting station, and a third power line was directly damaged by heat, causing 115,000 customers to be without power for 45 minutes. California's fire season, which traditionally starts in June, has been lengthening and getting worse, according to officials. Los Angeles, which is home to nearly 10 million people, has been largely spared damage this year. In October last year 30 blazes raged across southern California, forcing the evacuation of more than 500,000 people and damaging some 2,000 homes.United StatesNatural disasters and extreme weatherguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Published: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:52:32 GMT - Source: Guardian.Co.Uk - Read the article

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Kirk Douglas	Glenn Close	Catherine Zeta-Jones	Oliver Stone