ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 16, 1996 TAG: 9603190008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LONDON
SOURCE: MATT WOLF ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kate Winslet's ripe impetuosity in ``Sense and Sensibility'' has made the young actress both an Academy Award nominee and a star.
As for the two traits of the title, she knows which one suits her. ``I'm sensibility; I am, I am,'' Winslet said over lunch in north London, talking animatedly while she ate a green salad and smoked.
``My fundamental me, my real me, is much more sensibility,'' she said. ``Otherwise, actually, why am I acting in all honesty? There's an element in all actors of getting to the root of certain emotions, digging around inside your soul and chucking things out.''
Conversation tumbles out of the 20-year-old actress with an endearing fervor, unrestrained by caution or calculation, her open-faced enthusiasm - those lips! those eyes! - even more engaging face to face than on screen.
``I still don't understand why I have this thing about wanting to act so much. But it was always my drive, and if I say I'm going to do something, I do it. I am so incredibly stubborn.''
Others use words like ``radiant'' and ``passionate'' to describe a far livelier screen presence than one sometimes gets from the reigning English rose.
Indeed, England hasn't seen anything like it since Julia Ormond forsook Hackney in east London for the vagaries of Hollywood, even if no single Ormond performance has yet to generate the buzz of Winslet's Marianne.
In her first film, ``Heavenly Creatures,'' Winslet drew audiences into the erotic fantasy-turned-murderous reality of an English teen-ager in 1950s New Zealand. Based on a true story, the film was a critical success and got a 1995 Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.
The emotions in ``Sense and Sensibility'' - based on Jane Austen's first novel - are less lethal, if no less volatile.
Playing the lovesick Marianne, middle sister of the financially squeezed Dashwood clan, Winslet fiercely embraces the dictates of the heart against the ``prudence and honor and duty'' extolled by older sister Elinor (Emma Thompson).
The movie has been the most honored to date of a spate of Austen adaptations for different media - film, TV, even the stage - that shows no sign of letting up.
The recipient already of the Golden Globe award for best drama, ``Sense and Sensibility'' is up for seven Oscars on March 25, including best film, best actress and adapted screenplay (both for Thompson) and Winslet's own mention. (Last month, the actress won the same award from the Screen Actors Guild.)
Winslet was talking at the end of a busy week in which she first flew to Los Angeles to test for a film about the Titanic to be directed by James Cameron (``The Terminator''). One of the high points of the trip? Eating Caesar salad: ``It's so good in California.'' She returned to London to continue filming her Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's new screen version of ``Hamlet.'' Branagh is separated in real life from Thompson, Winslet's screen sister.
Uppermost in her mind this particular lunch were three grainy photos in The News of the World, Britain's top-selling Sunday tabloid, showing her kissing actor Rufus Sewell, who has a tiny part in ``Hamlet.''
``When this stuff happens, it kind of makes your whole substance get thrown out the window,'' said Winslet, who, after several reads, stuffed the offending newspaper in her bag.
``Just going downstairs to use the bathroom and looking at myself in the mirror, you have to keep going, `This is me; you're working at the moment and you're loving your work and you love acting and you know you do, and this is what it's about.'''
The actress acknowledges she is at that point when anonymity starts to vanish. The restaurant's staff offer proof of that, snapping into action to find a table once she walks in.
``It's not like it changes my behavior or anything like that,'' said Winslet, refusing either to be resentful of the recognition or to form some kind of attitude. ``It's better to just ignore it and be who you are.''
Winslet's identity seems rooted in growing up in a very strong, loving, secure environment. She is the second of four children born in Reading, west of London, to an actor-father for whom, Winslet said, ``things never really completely kicked off.'' Her mother is a qualified nanny and sister Anna, 23, is also an actress.
Theater school in neighboring Maidenhead led to a Sugar Puffs commercial, a short-lived sitcom called ``Get Back,'' and her role in ``Heavenly Creatures,'' which in turn landed Winslet a Hollywood agent - and ``Sense and Sensibility.''
She had never read Jane Austen before hearing of Marianne. But with the part came a grip on the character expressed with the impassioned intelligence of someone twice her age.
``Marianne is the victim of her own sensibility, which is the thing I found most touching about her,'' said Winslet, who, since ``Sense and Sensibility,'' has completed another screen version of a Great British Novel - Thomas Hardy's ``Jude the Obscure,'' simplified for film purposes to ``Jude.''
``She has been so untouched by the world that she knew no different but to be who she was, and she suffered for that,'' continued the actress about the character, moved that ``somebody could be as honest and be so generous with her heart and yet have it still broken.''
That Marianne eventually gets a man - if not the one first intended - may find a real-life echo of sorts in Winslet's date of a different nature: with Oscar this month.
With sensibility taking a back seat to sense, she predicts that the winner will be Mira Sorvino, the sweet-natured hooker of Woody Allen's ``Mighty Aphrodite.''
Not that Winslet will be caught without an acceptance speech.
``I've thought about it a lot,'' she said, ``about stopping myself from being long-winded and bursting into tears.
``I'm looking forward to it for my mom and dad, as well. It's such an experience. It's going to be wild.''
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. ``I still don't understand why I have this thingby CNBabout wanting to act so much,'' says actress Kate Winslet. color.