It’s safe to say that Kate Winslet has been one of the biggest movie stars on the planet ever since the film “Titanic” hit theaters. While Winslet had made a name for herself before that as a teen, in the 1994 film “Heavenly Creatures,” it was definitely the 1997 blockbuster that launched her into a whole new level of fame. Winslet recalled to The Hollywood Reporter, “I didn’t like this being suddenly famous thing of being told that I had to be one thing, or another.” She added, “I still had a lot to learn and just was not ready to be this great, big, famous person.”

Of course, Winslet went on to become that “great, big, famous person” anyway by continuing to wow critics and fans alike with roles in movies like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Finding Neverland,” and “The Reader,” the latter of which she won the Academy Award for in 2008. Fast-forward to 2021, Winslet proved she still had major star power thanks to the popular HBO miniseries “Mare of Easttown,” taking home both a Golden Globe and Emmy for her performance. 

While it’s clear that Winslet has had a dream Hollywood career, her real life may not be as perfect as it seems. The “Contagion” actor has actually faced a lot of hardships in both her professional life and personal life. So with that said, let’s break down those tragic details about Kate Winslet.

Kate Winslet’s parents struggled financially

Kate Winslet’s story is one of rags to riches. The future Oscar winner’s parents were actors, but they struggled to land work, which in turn meant the family struggled financially. Winslet revealed to The Hollywood Reporter, “We were on free meal benefits, and we were supported as a family by a charity called The Actor’s Charitable Club, who would literally help with the basics of living because the life of a starving actor for my father was extremely hard.”

While Winslet told The Telegraph that her father never had a stable career as an actor, she recalled him taking odd jobs to make ends meet. Yet, things took a turn for the worse when her father suffered a severe foot injury when Winslet was 10 years old. “After that, he couldn’t really act, and things got much harder,” she said.

However, Winslet herself had started to act and by age 15, she landed a role in the BBC children’s series “Dark Season.” She then dropped out of school to devote more time to making money. She explained, “It wasn’t simply a case of wanting to succeed. It was more a case of having to.” Winslet still remembers her childhood fondly though, thanks to her parents. She told The Guardian, “There was no anxiety for anything when I was growing up, they just taught me to be me.”

The Titanic star’s first boyfriend died of cancer

In 1997, Stephen Tredre, Kate Winslet’s first longterm boyfriend, died of cancer. According to The Telegraph, Winslet was only 15 years old when she had met the 27-year-old actor/screenwriter on the set of their TV series “Dark Season.” Despite their 12-year age gap, they began dating and she moved to London with him two years later. “He was the most important person in my life … Stephen made me feel secure and embraced,” she said to Parade.

When Tredre was later diagnosed with bone cancer in 1994, Winslet would go directly from movie sets to the hospital to be by his side. However, they decided to split in 1995 when he was in remission. She recalled, “After we separated, he got ill again. Stephen and I talked every day.” Tredre then reportedly ended their relationship so Winslet didn’t have to watch him die. “That as an act of love from one human being to another was overwhelming,” she said in The Telegraph.

After Tredre’s death, Winslet got flack for skipping the “Titanic” premiere to attend his funeral. She recalled to The Guardian, “I was a bit depressed by that… someone I had spent four and a half years of my life with had just died.” Over a decade later, Winslet told The Telegraph she still regrets their breakup, saying, “I wish I had just been there. To the bitter end. … I still go over those moments in my head.”

Kate Winslet’s first marriage was toxic

It appears that Kate Winslet’s first marriage to James Threapleton was pretty toxic. According to Parade, the two met on the set of her film “Hideous Kinky,” where he worked as the film’s third assistant director. They got married in 1998 and welcomed their daughter, Mia, soon after. However, the couple split by 2000, with Winslet suggesting that she may have married Threapleton for the wrong reasons. She explained, “I thought I wanted to be with Jim. I was dealing with the pain of having lost Stephen [Tredre] and ‘Titanic’ coming out. Jim was just a regular guy, and that had a big impact on me.” 

Yet Threapleton apparently had issues with Winslet’s growing fame at the time, discouraging her from taking on parts that would boost her career. She said to Index, “I started looking for supporting roles, because Jim didn’t want me to be famous.” She added, “That was the only time in my life that I’ve ever lost control of my instincts.”

It seems that Winslet had realized her marriage wasn’t working when she could no longer recognize herself. “In the last year and half of our marriage, I became a completely different person. I was isolated from my family and my friends,” she recalled. While Winslet said leaving Threapleton was terrifying since Mia was just a baby, she revealed, “I knew that I had to go. It was like there was a clock ticking.”

Sam Mendes reportedly cheated on her

While Kate Winslet’s second marriage to director Sam Mendes lasted longer than her first union, it seemingly didn’t start or end on great terms. When it came to meeting Mendes in 2000, the “Revolutionary Road” actor told Parade that she sensed a spark immediately. Yet, because the two had gotten together right after she separated from her first husband, she was tormented by the media who falsely accused her of cheating. “Of course the press blamed our divorce on that, saying that Sam and I had had an affair,” she recalled to Index.

The couple went on to elope anyway in 2003, and welcomed their son, Joe, later that year. Things apparently took a turn for the worse in 2010 though, when Mendes began working with actor Rebecca Hall. “When Kate found out that Sam had grown close to Rebecca she was upset,” a source told Daily Mail at the time. Rumors then circulated that Mendes was stepping out, with an insider even claiming to the Daily Mail, “He told [Winslet] ‘people can’t be inspired by just one relationship.'”

While Mendes denied cheating on Winslet, the two eventually divorced in 2011, and he went on to date Hall. Despite her heartbreak, Winslet refused to speak bad about him, telling Harper’s Bazaar UK (via PopSugar), “We have a child together who we both love — and raising him together, jointly and without any conflict, is absolutely key.”

Kate Winslet was involved in a scary ordeal in 2011 when she escaped a massive house fire on an island owned by British billionaire Richard Branson. The “Labor Day” actor had been vacationing with her children on Necker Island, when the house they were staying in caught fire in the middle of the night. Winslet later told The Sun (via The Independent), “I’m just so glad that everyone is safe. And this very easily could not have been the case.”

The traumatic ordeal did leave Winslet with a new fear though. She explained to Candis magazine in 2020 (via Daily Mail), “That was probably the biggest crisis that I’ve ever faced — it obviously makes you more anxious, and I’m now paranoid about house fires, which I didn’t used to be.” The actor shared that she’s now extra cautious about anything that could be a fire hazard. “I’m always unplugging hairdryers and hot tongs and checking them obsessively three times to make sure,” she said. 

Yet, there was a silver lining. “What you realize is that all that matters is the people that you love. Everything else is just stuff,” she said in The Sun. What’s more, she met her husband, Edward Abel Smith (aka Ned Rocknroll), after the fire broke out. Smith is Branson’s nephew and was also on the island. Winslet joked to ET, “He was the only dude to have a head torch and a pair of shoes, everyone else left everything behind…So I married him!”

She was bullied about her weight for years

Fans may be surprised to learn that a beautiful A-list celebrity like Kate Winslet could ever have trouble fitting in, but that’s exactly what happened for most of her life. The “Mildred Pierce” star shared at the WE Day UK, “I had been bullied at school. They called me Blubber. Teased me for wanting to act. Locked me in the cupboard. Laughed at me.” In a 2006 interview with Parade, she remembered how difficult to go to school every day. “Other girls teased me terribly,” she said. “I’d just put my head down and get on with it. That was my means of survival.”

Things didn’t get much easier for Winslet when she began acting professionally in her teens either. After accepting her BAFTA award in 2016, she told reporters, “When I was only 14, I was told by a drama teacher that I might do okay if I was happy to settle for the fat girl parts.” Of course all those comments led to Winslet never feeling good enough while growing up.

Sadly, the bullying somehow got even worse after Winslet rose to fame in “Titanic,” since it was now the press that criticized her weight. “It was almost laughable how shocking, how critical, how straight-up cruel tabloid journalists were to me,” she told The Guardian. She continued, “They would comment on my size … It was critical and horrible and so upsetting to read.”

Kate Winslet has had health issues

Kate Winslet has had to deal with some health issues over the years. One of Winslet’s problems is stress incontinence, which is also somewhat of a taboo subject. Yet Winslet didn’t hold back when talking about it on “The Graham Norton Show,” dishing, per UK Express, “I can’t jump on trampolines anymore, I wet myself. It’s bloody awful, especially if you’re wearing a skirt.” 

Because stress incontinence can be an embarrassing topic, Winslet was then praised for speaking out about the condition. According to Daily Mail, one woman even said, “It’s so great to see influential women chatting so casually about this condition,” adding, “When it comes to talking about this I think there are a lot of women who are nervous.”

Another difficult subject that Winslet had openly discussed was disordered eating behavior, which she seemingly had suffered from earlier in her career. She shared, per Daily Mail, “I became addicted to losing weight and went too far. I was never anorexic or bulimic. I went through a three-month experimental laxative time which was absolutely awful.” While Winslet explained that she was able to realize what she was doing wasn’t healthy, she could have seriously harmed her body. She even pointed out how hard it is to not struggle with weight and body image in her business, telling Good Housekeeping, “It seems to me that [Hollywood] is breeding a whole new generation of anorexics.”

The Finding Neverland actor was involved in lawsuits

Like many stars of her caliber, Kate Winslet, unfortunately, has been subjected to negative tabloid attention. Some of the reports have led her to take legal action. In 2007, the magazine Grazia claimed that Winslet had seen a dietician to lose weight. The allegations were not only upsetting for Winslet, but she also felt it had hurt her reputation. Per E! News, she said in a statement, “I am not a hypocrite. I have always been, and shall continue to be, honest when it comes to bodyweight issues.” Winslet won that libel suit and Grazia issued an apology. She also was awarded $10,000, which she donated to an eating disorder charity. 

Two years later, according to Us Weekly, the Daily Mail accused her of lying about her exercise routine, and referred to her as “the world’s most irritating actress.”

Winslet then sued the publication, sharing that she was “hurt and embarrassed” by what was written and that it again made her look like she was lying to the public when she preached body positivity. She explained, “I had a responsibility to request an apology in order to demonstrate my commitment to the views that I have always expressed about body issues.” Winslet won that suit too and was awarded $40,000, along with another public apology. While it must have been nice for Winslet to win each case, it’s sad she had to take such measures in the first place.

Kate Winslet’s controversial career moves

Kate Winslet has faced backlash from fans over the years for some of her actions off-screen. One was her decision to work with directors Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, despite them both being involved in sexual abuse scandals. She seemingly made matters worse when she then defended that decision, telling The New York Times, “I had an extraordinary working experience with both of those men.” Yet she eventually changed her stance after thinking it over. She told The Guardian, “I realized it was sitting very badly with me. I shouldn’t have worked with Woody, or Roman [Polanski], and I’ll probably always grapple with those regrets.”

That wasn’t the only time Winslet faced scrutiny though, since some people felt she dismissed Hollywood’s gender pay gap issues. In an interview with BBC, she said, “I’m having such a problem with these conversations,” adding, “it’s a bit vulgar isn’t it?” But Winslet later told E! News that she had actually been misquoted and that she of course believes women should be paid equally as men. She explained, “When you’re talking about specifics of pay that is a line of questioning I really had a hard time with. So my remarks were in response to that.”

It’s clear that “The Dressmaker” actor isn’t afraid to own up to her mistakes or overcome the many tragedies that life has thrown at her over the years. Because of that, it’s safe to say that she’s more than just a movie star but a true role model.

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Conjoined twins Olivia and Gianna arrived in Riyadh from the Philippines on Tuesday for medical evaluation, Saudi state media reported.

The twins were transferred from King Khalid International Airport to King Abdullah Specialist Children’s Hospital, where doctors will assess their condition and determine whether separation surgery is possible.

The family accompanying the twins expressed appreciation for the assistance provided upon their arrival in the Kingdom.

SPA

After Valentino Garavani retired in 2008 from a fashion world in which the meaning of luxury had changed, his half-century of couture creation was marked with exhibitions.

The one at Somerset House in London in 2012, Valentino: Master of Couture, displayed more than a hundred of his outfits within close peering range, each with a card bearing the name of the woman – royal, diva, star, social leader – for whom it had been created.

In another room were samplers of the superlative techniques of Valentino’s ragazze, the ‘‘girls’’ in white coats in his couture ateliers who had sewn those gowns. The definitive Valentino dress was patchworked of handmade lace, so light it could have been posted in an A3 envelope.

Valentino, who has died aged 93, was a specialist in a high level of luxury without undue grandeur, dressing the world’s most photographed women from the Dolce Vita period of Italian cinema in the 1960s to J-Lo at the Oscars in the 2000s. He never led, or wanted to lead, fashion in cut, line or mood, and, although he was proud to be the first Italian couturier fully, if reluctantly, accepted by Paris as one of their own by training and aspiration, he kept a direct connection with a more personal Italian tradition of skilled dressmakers: the needs of the wearer always came first.

Glamour was his metier – he had been enchanted into the business as a boy by the glittering, shimmering, robes of the showgirls processing down endless stairs in the 1941 Hollywood musical Ziegfeld Girl. Long before red carpets at film premieres and the steps of the New York Metropolitan Museum on gala night became major fashion venues, Valentino designed gowns that would have been show-stoppers on them.

He was far ahead of Paris when the actual red carpet business took off in the late 80s.

Valentino was born in Voghera, Lombardy. From his babyhood onwards, his parents, Mauro and Teresa (she named him after the silent film sensation Rudolph Valentino) indulged the boy’s tastes, and later his aunt Rosa and another local dressmaker allowed him into their workrooms. From 1949, his parents funded his education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and supported him through five years of apprenticeship in the house of the couturier Jean Dessès; then he did two more years with Guy Laroche

Valentino’s father and a fellow businessman backed his first couture studio, on the Via Condotti in Rome in 1959, and Valentino, determined to equal Parisian couture, spent without limit on fabrics, furs and French mannequins. It might have ended in bankruptcy, but in a cafe, one hot night in July 1960, he met the 19-year-old architecture student Giancarlo Giammetti. Giammetti, who had a natural aptitude for business, gave up his studies, and joined Valentino to refound the company in a small apartment on the Via Gregoriana. Gradually, they took over the rest of the palazzo.

Their business was in the right place at the right time. Italian craftwork was relatively cheap, compared with France, for the making of fashion, and California for the shooting of movies. Valentino made a dress for Elizabeth Taylor, visiting the then Rome studios Cinecittà for a premiere, and in 1962 Giammetti persuaded Valentino to show at the Italian collections in the Pitti Palace in Florence, which attracted American department store buyers unwilling to pay ever higher Paris premiums for the rights to reproduce catwalk designs.

Valentino began to sell directly in New York in 1964, his most valued customer the widowed Jacqueline Kennedy; he later made her delicate lace dress for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis. As John Fairchild of Women’s Wear Daily said: “Valentino just wanted to dress very important, beautiful women.”

Jackie O was his perfect customer, moneyed yet devoid of vulgarity, as were most of his private clients. Through the 60s and into the 70s, he was court dressmaker to the beautiful people, including the empress of Iran, Farah Pahlavi, and the Vogue editor Diana Vreeland; he dressed them all with featherweight majesty, though Yves Saint Laurent’s business partner, Pierre Bergé, once sneered at him for dressing ‘‘whores and kept women”.

As Paris couture turned theatrical from the mid-70s, Valentino remained the safest salon for wealthy women, and Giammetti ensured that he and Valentino could live at a similar level to their clients through up to 42 lucrative licensing deals. Their style was high – parties, travel with a retinue to five fully-staffed, antiques-stuffed homes around the world, a yacht, a jet and, in Italy’s most turbulent years, a bullet-proof Ferrari in Valentino’s signature shade of red. “You feel cosy around them,” Joan Juliet Buck, former editor of French Vogue, said of the pair, “wondering when they’ll bring out the next quail egg.”

All this was more extravagant than the Parisian couturier manner. Even Hubert de Givenchy never assembled an art collection to compare with that of Valentino, who hung his beloved Bronzino portrait of Eleanora of Toledo behind his desk. In 1990, he opened an art gallery, the Accademia Valentino, in Rome, where he was, teased Giammetti, “a state power”.

The history of the fashion house is best traced garment by garment, who wore it and when. His dressmaker’s good manners in physically flattering his clients brought movie-star and later pop-star custom, including Taylor, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, and Cate Blanchett, who had not a measurement or a gesture in common – “you need to know the body,” Valentino warned, “you need to know the mood of the lady, and you need a very good seamstress”.

The couture ateliers lost a few million annually out of a billion-dollar turnover, but were an investment in prestige, research and development. In Valentino: The Last Emperor, Matt Tyrnauer’s 2008 documentary film, the links between Valentino, his clients and the workhands who clad them are visibly close: many customers and seamstresses were with him all their adult lives, and his few key upper-level personnel stayed for decades too. The film was an unexpected pop phenomenon, and made Valentino’s retirement feel even more like the end of an era.

Giammetti had persuaded Valentino to go directly into high-end ready-to-wear, menswear and accessories, and in the 90s terminated all licences except for perfume, jeans and sunglasses. In 1998, when couture houses were being transformed into brand trophies, he and Valentino were paid $300m for the company by the Italian conglomerate HdP.

It was sold on in 2002 to the textile firm Marzotto Apparel: a private equity group bought it in 2007, and sold it to a Qatari consortium in 2012. Valentino showed his final collection in 2008, but in retirement still designed for a few favoured clients, and the ballet. Otherwise, he sustained his perpetual deep tan between the yacht and the gardens of his houses, with his tribe of pug dogs and important guests.

The end of his emotional relationship with Giammetti after 12 years never impaired their business partnership and friendship. From 1982, Valentino lived with Bruce Hoeksema, who was vice-president of the company until its sale. His sister, Wanda, who also worked in the business, died in 1997.

Of all his Italian, American, British and French awards, he was most pleased at becoming a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 2006, and with his 2008 Médaille de la Ville de Paris. He remembered when the French did not believe that there could ever be serious Italian couture.

 Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani, couturier, born 11 May 1932; died 19 January 2026

The Guardian