The Essentials: The 10 Best Kate Winslet Performances

“Revolutionary Road” (2008)
Reunited with her “Titanic” co-star after more than 10 years, in a supremely emotional film directed by her then-husband, Sam Mendes, “Revolutionary Road” marks one of the grandest stages for Winslet to showcase her talents. The film throbs with a kind of charged intensity that, one imagines, can only be summoned through working with familiar faces. You can feel it with Winslet in every one of her scenes. She’s volatile, high-strung, and completely liberated to play within the boundless confines of her artistic comfort zone. As unhinged as her portrayal of April Wheeler is, it’s still furiously engaged to the source material, Richard Yates‘ novel of the same name. She plays a housewife who’s spiraling in the emptiness of her 1940s suburban surroundings, and if it sounds too similar to “Little Children,” you need to watch it again. It’s a testament to the actress for her ability to portray two characters with similar predicaments in completely divergent ways. This confrontational, tete-a-tete dynamic of a crumbling marriage that marked such a big difference in the roles (and her approach to them), was perhaps a key attraction for Winslet, who was the biggest mover and shaker in getting the film into production. Once Leonardo DiCaprio got on board, their shared “Titanic” experience became an inspirational elephant in the room, for “Revolutionary Road” is the total antithesis to the epic romance they brought to life in James Cameron‘s film. The on-screen chemistry on display here has lost none of its intensity even if it’s made of much more acrimonious matter, and with regards to both actors’ careers, the film is essential for an appreciation of just how far their talents have grown.

“The Reader” (2008)
The awards circuit was incredibly strange in 2008-2009, especially when it came to Kate Winslet. Here she was, a five-time Oscar-nominee widely considered one of the greatest actresses in the business, with two showy performances in two awards-baity productions. She ended up taking home the Golden Globe for “Revolutionary Road,” and the Oscar for “The Reader,” adding another one of those overdue ‘FINALLY!’ moments to Oscar’s history. Weirder still were catcalls of category fraud (many believe it’s a Best Supporting Oscar disguised as Lead) and the fact that she wasn’t even nominated for “Revolutionary Road,” a role we’d personally choose over her Hanna Schmitz any day. In that event, her performance in “The Reader” will forever be remembered as “the one that got her the Oscar.” But, remove the cobwebs of industry politics, and you’ll find it essential for more than just decorative reasons. It’s a deeply felt, superbly crafted portrayal of a woman with staunch-yet-decidedly-skewed principles. Her complicit nature with Nazi cruelty is as circumspect as her overpowering desire to introduce young Michael (David Kross) to adulthood, and despite director Stephen Daldry‘s attempts to the contrary, Hanna Schmitz is a character of mostly ambiguous morals. Until the very end, of course. Her ironclad nature is rooted into every word she speaks, but Winslet finds a way to express them even through silence. Recall her weighted nods to Michael’s pleas of forgiveness, her emotional reaction when she eavesdrops on a choir, or the court-room scenes when she stands among the accused. As hard as her big secret is to swallow (blame the material for that), Winslet nails the kind of pathos needed for a better understanding of this complicated character. Whether she deserves the Oscar for this role or a previous one is a conversation that shouldn’t throw shade at the finely chiseled performance itself.

“Mildred Pierce” (2011)
We’ve arrived at the last milestone (to date) of Kate Winslet’s distinguished career. Since it’s not a feature film performance it would be considered a slight cheat were it not so impossible to ignore. Todd Haynes‘ five-part miniseries for HBO realizes the totality of James M. Cain‘s classic “Mildred Pierce” through every novelistic nook and cranny. The titular character, a divorced woman determined to stand on her own two feet during the Great Depression, is the kind of role that Winslet was born to make her own. Her warm embrace of the character shed none of Mildred’s unflappable independence, even as it’s decidedly removed from Joan Crawford‘s portrayal of the same character in Michael Curtiz‘ 1945 version. Mildred’s life ends up revolving around a tempestuous relationship with her daughter Veda (Evan Rachel Wood, excellent in seething vitriol) and the playboy Monty (Guy Pearce, enjoying one of his own career highs), all while gaining the moxie to sustain a restaurant business from the ground up. Running over five hours long, Haynes’ sophisticated direction and expansive adaptation (with co-writer Jon Raymond) are centripetal forces, anchored by Winslet’s cynosure portrayal. It’s a bountiful part that provides the actress with the biggest canvass she’s ever worked with, allowing her to explore and express every aspect of one woman’s entire personality. Nuanced through subtle shades like a Renaissance sculpture, her Mildred Pierce is one of the most fully formed and deeply human characters of her entire career and as far as the 2010s are concerned, it remains unparalleled to this day.

Honorable Mentions: We’ve gone over what we think are the benchmarks of her career, but, naturally, we don’t dare encourage you to turn a blind eye to everything else she’s done. It’s amazing how unconcerned she was with stardom after “Titanic,” more attracted to roles like Campion’s “Holy Smoke” and the similar-if-slightly-less-forceful turn as Julia in “Hideous Kinky” (1998). Even before she made epic romantic history on a boat, her classical talents were put to the Shakespearean test as Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh‘s “Hamlet” (1996), which she passed like a pro, and she’s tremendous in Michael Winterbottom‘s “Jude” too.

“Quills” (2000) is much more Geoffrey Rush‘s vehicle, but her turn as the beautiful laundress Maddy LeClerc is worthy of an honorable mention. As is her BAFTA-nominated portrayal of Sylvia Davies — Peter Pan’s mom, basically — in “Finding Neverland” (2004). Her quirky and offbeat performance as Tula in John Turturro‘s troubled “Romance & Cigarettes” (2005) is probably the best thing about that film. While her performance as herself in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s “Extras” pilot episode (2005) is so amazing it almost warrants an entry on the main list. Also worth mentioning is one of her greatest box-office success stories, Nancy Meyers’ “The Holiday” (2006), a generic picture made all that much more watchable thanks to her presence.

That’s what she does, doesn’t she? She’s got that undeniable natural charisma that’s so easy on the eyes, even when the material is severely lacking, the whole thing’s made more digestible thanks to her bottomless talent for the craft. Go on then, your turn. Tell us how much you love her and hold nothing back. What are some of your favorite performances? Of the ten we talked about, is there one you’d replace with anything else? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to check out “Steve Jobs” when it opens near you.