Actress Kate Winslet became a household name when she exploded onto the scene in the film Titantic. Since then she’s acted in films such as Iris, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Finding Neverland and has received several Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Winslet was recently in London promoting her latest films, The Reader and Revolutionary Road, and took some time to chat about working with her husband, Sam Mendes, her Titanic co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio, and being terrified at the thought of playing a Nazi guard.

With The Reader and Revolutionary Road you have two very demanding roles. Take us through how you managed to do them?
Kate Winslet (KW): Well, I'm still sort of a little bit recovering from the last 18 months of my life - just coming to terms with the fact that I got to play April Wheeler [Revolutionary Road] and Hanna Schmitz [The Reader] in one year, let alone in my lifetime. I'm very, very aware of how rare that is as an opportunity for any one person. I can't tell you how much I've been able to take away from these experiences creatively. I really, really learned so much about acting, about myself... all of those things. It's difficult to talk about the actor's process without sounding like an arrogant asshole but they really were very challenging.

There wasn't very much time between wrapping Revolutionary Road and starting The Reader. It was about five and a half months which, for me, isn't that long. Some actors are very good at just going from one thing to another but I've always been a bit useless at that. The preparation time is important for me, and it was particularly important for Hanna as well, just because when I first read that script I thought, "OK, I'm terrified!", number one. And number two, there is literally nothing in my own life that I can draw upon in order to play this part. Nothing, nothing, nothing. So, I knew that every day was going to be a bit like climbing a mountain. I knew there was so much that I didn't know, that I would have to understand, the German accent, etc. It was a lot and it does leave you shattered. Also for me, I don't make endless movies back to back all the time, I really sort of come to understand and love the characters that I play.

And with April and Hanna you sort of go through a weird period of feeling sad about letting them go. Sometimes that takes me a week and sometimes it takes me a couple of months, just so that I can feel I can realign my own thoughts again. I do feel really, really blessed that I've had these opportunities.

What was your reaction when you saw the 65-year-old version of yourself looking back at you?
KW: God, I was so fascinated by that whole process. I've never worked with prosthetics before in that sort of capacity. I did a bit of prosthetic work when I had to give birth in Jude, which is quite a different set of prosthetics. But I had so much admiration for the hair and make-up department and the prosthetics team, who are actually based at Shepperton, and who put together that look for Hanna. I honestly just loved it and was so amazed by the work they'd done. It was very difficult to wear and really uncomfortable... the teeth and the eyeballs and hands, feet and body. It took seven and a half hours to put on.

Given that Sam Mendes and Stephen Daldry both have backgrounds in British theatre, are they very similar in the way they work?
KW: Yeah, very, very similar. The great thing about both of them is that they really enjoy the company of actors because it's a comfortable place for them to be. So, yes, very similar. Very thorough in the rehearsal process but more in terms of just understanding the characters, understanding where the actors are at with discovering those characters for themselves, and just setting an overall emotional tone for the piece as opposed to necessarily getting things up on their feet or staging scenes.

To read part two of the interview, click the link below.