Kate Winslet wins first Oscar
2009-02-23 07:01
Los Angeles - British actor Kate Winslet won her first Oscar on Sunday for her portrayal of a German woman with a secret Nazi past in the romantic drama The Reader.
Titanic star Winslet, 33, was Oscar-nominated five times in the past 13 years, but had always returned home empty-handed.
Her best actress Oscar joins two Golden Globes, a Screen Actors Guild award, a British Bafta and a handful of US critics awards that Winslet has won this season.
"To the academy thank you so much. My God," she said.
In addition to her acclaimed turn in The Reader, she won plaudits for her performance as a disillusioned housewife in Revolutionary Road. The two films were released only weeks apart.
Most challenging role
Winslet has said that portraying Hanna Schmitz, a former Nazi prison guard who embarks on an affair with a teen-age boy more than a decade later, was the most challenging role she had ever played because she had little in her own life to draw on.
"Just getting underneath the skin of such a complex person who had lived such an isolated life for so many different reasons, it was hard and quite lonely at times," she told Reuters in a recent interview.
Winslet found international fame as the co-star of the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, but rather than embracing Hollywood's big time, she opted for smaller, art house movies often made in her native Britain.
In parts ranging from the quirky girlfriend in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to the laundress in an 18th century insane asylum in Quills, Winslet made a point of avoiding the cute blonde actress career trap.
She is a close friend of her Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, but it took the pair more than 10 years to team up again, this time in the anti-romance Revolutionary Road.
Winslet is married to Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes and has two young children.