
Kate Winslet was making a turkey sandwich when her acting career began. She was 17, working in a delicatessen in Reading in England's south. Her paycheck covered train tickets to auditions in London.
"The phone rang. And it was the strangest thing; there was something about the way the phone rang that I remember thinking, 'Oh, it's for me,'" she told The Late Show in 2017.
"I've got turkey in one hand and mayo in the other, and I look at this [customer], and [say], 'I'm so sorry. I can't make this sandwich for you anymore,' and ran to the telephone."
It was her agent. Less than a year since leaving school to pursue acting in earnest, Kate Winslet had landed a film role. Heavenly Creatures, the 1994 drama directed by the esteemed Peter Jackson.
What happened next is, well, titanic.
Watch: Kate Winslet tells Oprah in 1998 about meeting Leonardo DiCaprio. Post continues after video.
When Kate Winslet rejected Hollywood.
Childhood for Kate Winslet wasn't always easy. She grew up in a working-class family, in a crowded terrace house in Reading. Her father was a frustrated actor, her mother a nanny and waiter.
At school, she was mercilessly bullied about her weight.
"I had kids lock me in a cupboard and say, 'blubber's blubbing in the cupboard,'" she told NPR's Fresh Air program. "It was horrible. I would go home. I would cry. I wouldn't want to go back to school the next day. But I knew that I wanted to be an actress one day.
"I had to push those horrible bullies and those awful feelings to one side and just hang on to my dream."
A decade later, in 1997, Kate Winslet became one of the most recognisable actors in the world. She was Titanic's Rose; one of the most famous roles in movie history. She was on magazines, in newspapers, the headline star on an episode of Oprah. Paparazzi camped outside her home, followed her to the shops.
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