Despite an Oscar and two Emmys, Kate Winslet still felt like she wasn’t qualified to play the lead in the first film she would produce.

“When I was making ‘Lee,’ I sat there and said, ‘This is ridiculous. I can actually think of at least five other brilliant actresses who would have played this role much better than me. How many ‘better,'” Winslet said.

The role that caused Winslet so much anxiety was that of American photographer Lee Miller – one of the few female journalists on the front lines of World War II. Miller captured some of the war’s most powerful images, including some of the first uses of napalm and Nazi concentration camps.

I’m struggling to bring “Lee” to the screen

Winslet said she knew it wouldn’t be an easy sell in Hollywood.

“There was a potential investor who said to me, ‘Why should I like this woman?’ “I mean, she’s drunk, she’s loud. She, I mean, he probably just didn’t say she had wrinkles on her face,” Winslet said.

She said a director told her that if she starred in his film, he would let her do “little” “Lee.”

The actor did not shoot the film with these men. Instead, she insisted on bringing in a female director, co-producer and screenwriter. Winslet was closely involved in every step of the production.

Winslet spent years visiting Miller’s estate in the English countryside, where the photographer lived with her husband, a British painter.

With the help of Miller’s son, Winslet searched the archives. She decided to focus the film not on Miller’s history as a model with many lovers, but on her time as a war photographer.

To tell the story, Winslet hired a historian to make an exact replica of Miller’s camera and actually took photos while she played.

“It couldn’t just be a prop,” Winslet said. “It had to feel like an extension of my arms. I needed to feel safe and comfortable with it. And to achieve that, I had to know what I was doing.”

From making sandwiches to making films

Winslet grew up as the second of four children in Reading, a working-class town just outside London. Her father was a struggling actor who often gave his daughter the advice she still lives by: You’re only as good as your last performance.

“He would bounce from job to job and then work part-time to make ends meet in the meantime,” she said. But even though there was little to change, we were really happy, said Winslet.

With financial support from an actors’ charity, she enrolled at a local theater school at the age of 11. Winslet took a train to London for auditions. At 16, she was working in a deli when she received news that she had landed her first film role.

“I was making a sandwich and the phone rang, and I swear to God, there was something wrong with the way the phone rang,” she said.

After making her first film, Heavenly Creatures, she went back to making sandwiches.

“That’s what I knew. You know, my dad would do jobs and he would go back to paving roads or working as a mail carrier. So I just thought, well, that’s what you do as an actor,” Winslet said. “If you’re lucky, you get a job and then go back to a day job.”

At the age of 20, she was offered the role that would make Hollywood history: she played Rose alongside Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack in “Titanic,” the first film to gross a billion dollars at the box office.

Since then, Winslet has had her choice of leading roles.

Film critics 60 Minutes spoke to compared her to the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep. Winslet spends months, even years, preparing for roles; She learned to dig fossils for “ammonites” and to make clothes for “ammonites.”The seamstress” and freediving, during which she holds her breath for more than seven minutes, for “Avatar: The Way of the Water.” She also develops a detailed backstory for each character, down to the sports they played in school and how they feel about their mothers.

And although she seems like someone with a shelf full of Oscars, she won her first and only Oscar in 2009 for her portrayal of a Nazi prison guard in The Reader. For years, she kept the statue in her bathroom so guests could hold it up in the mirror and pretend they were winning.

Dealing with the scrutiny of their appearance

While “Titanic” made Winslet a star, she said it came at a price; Paparazzi aggressively pursued them. Her performance became the subject of intense media scrutiny – something she says began at a young age.

She remembers that an acting teacher once told her that she should settle for roles as fat girls.

“That got me thinking: I’ll just show you,” Winslet said. “Just quietly. Actually, it was a kind of quiet determination.”

Winslet pushed back against the criticism she received after “Titanic” — speaking out not just for herself, but “for all the people who were subjected to this harassment. It was terrible. It was really bad.”

Winslet, 49, said she developed armor that she gives to characters like Lee Miller. While filming “Lee,” a crew member approached Winslet and suggested she sit up and suck it in because she was showing a bulge. It was advice Winslet ignored.

“No, I don’t think Lee would have done it,” Winslet said. “It’s about knowing that it was a hard struggle for her to feel comfortable physically.”