Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born on October 5th, 1975, in Reading, Berkshire, to father Roger and mother Sally Bridges-Winslet. She has two sisters, Anna and Beth, and a brother named Joss. Acting was in the family. Two of her father's forebears - twins - appeared in vaudeville. Her mother's parents, Oliver and Linda, had run the Reading Repertory Theatre, and her uncle Robert Bridges had appeared in many productions, most notably as Mr Bumble in the original West End version of Oliver! Her father, too, was a thespian by trade (Anna and Beth have also followed this path), performing mostly onstage, but also appearing on a couple of episodes of Casualty, a show that provided one of Kate's earliest appearances.
Encountered her screen debut through a British TV series entitled "Shrinks" (1990), Kate afterwards left her school earlier in 1991 to develop an acting career and managed to appear in several other TV programs, such as "Dark Season" (1991), "Get Back" (1992), "Anglo Saxon Attitudes" (1992), plus "Casualty" (1993). A bright opportunity approached when the 17-years-old girl successfully earned her first film role in an audition for Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures", beating out 175 hopefuls to portray an obsessive adolescent named Juliet Hulme.
In 1998, she married assistant director Jim Threapleton. They had a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, in October 2000. They divorced in 2001. She later married director Sam Mendes in 2003 and gave birth to their son, Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes, later that year. After seven years of marriage, Kate announced that she and Sam amicably separated in February 2010. She was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her accomplishments in film and television.
