Ice Maiden
by Celia Duncan

from THE FACE No 77 February 1995

In Heavenly Creatures she's a precocious schoolgirl who earns infamy through an appalling crime. In real life she's a bright young actress with a pile of movie scripts on her doormat. Kate Winslet is enjoying the attention

Kate Winslet is in that curious limbo between British obscurity and Hollywood stardom. After completing 20 US auditions in six days, the ebullient 19-year-old has returned home to the prospect of serving in a Regents Park deli and auditioning for a Rover car ad. Well almost. In her boyfriend's north London flat, life is now punctuated by incessant telephone shrills and door buzzers. Her smooth-talking British agent. Her Irish-American agent. Her boyfriend. A journalist from home town Reading. It's 8pm before she winds up on a neat wicker chair with an apology and a Carlsberg Ice.

Just over a year ago Winslet was filming Heavenly Creatures in New Zealand, her first (low-budget and stunningly oddball) film. Set in Fifties Christchurch, the picture follows the true story of two 15-year-old girls, Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, whose obsessional friendship and fevered imaginations led to their shocking murder of Pauline's mother. It proved a surprising crossover success in the US, transforming Winslet, in her role as the arrogntly English Juliet, into a director's darling. Scripts including Romeo and Juliet in the original Shakespearian prose (directed by Baz Strictly Ballroom Luhrmann and co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio) started crowding the doormat. "The variety of roles is great. I'm sick of playing snobs all the time so when parts arrive for a Tank-Girl-style heroine, that's great. I've got a whole stack of American scripts in the bedroom," she beams, relishing the workload.

In contrast her 17-year-old co-star in Heavenly Creatures, the equally able but less beautiful New Zealander Melanie Lynskey, remains in New Plymouth, New Zealand, a Twin Peaks of a town where suicides are monthly and kicks come in the form of I-hate-Melanie-Lynskey anti-fanclubs (Thai- "Oh dear.."). Melanie is reportedly very like Pauline in real life, a recalcitrant "fiddler". Winslet, meanwhile, shares Juliet's love of attention. "Juliet is this incredibly exotic figure that suddenly enters their lives. She's seen as the creme de la creme and everyone adores her." The similarity doesn't stop there. "Old photos of Juliet look scarily like me, and right from the beginning I really understood where she was coming from." Given that Juliet is imaginative yet arrogant - a sympathetic character but not necessarily a lovable one - it's an odd parallel for Kate to acknowledge. Perhaps it's because they both share the same film-star ambitions. "If I made it to Hollywood, it would be Juliet's dream come true. That's really what the girls wanted to do," she says answering the intercom yet again. Three film scripts arrive by motorcycle courier. Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility starring Emma Thompson, Joe's Basement written by John Paton, and Feeling Minnesota with Keanu Reeves. "Who knows?" she says. "Maybe Hollywood will happen."