Actress Kate Winslet is synonymous with the character of Rose from James Cameron’s disaster epic Titanic. The film saw her paired up with Leonardo DiCaprio in the doomed romance set aboard the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic in 1912. The film garnered her a Best Actress nomination at the Oscars and the film was the highest-grossing movie of all time then.
Despite earning billions, Titanic remains one of the many in Winslet’s amazing filmography. Though she is best known for her role in Cameron’s film, she has delivered far superior and mature performances since the big blockbuster. Here are three performances from Kate Winslet’s extensive filmography that are far better than Titanic.
1. Little Children (2006)
Directed by Todd Field of Tár fame, Kate Winslet plays a housewife who has an affair with her neighbor played by Patrick Wilson. Based on the book by Tom Perrotta, the film sees Winslet portray an unhappy housewife married to an older man with a p*rn addiction. The film garnered her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, which she lost to Helen Mirren in The Queen.
Despite being a commercial disaster, Little Children was placed among The New York Times critic AO Scott’s best films of the year, and Winslet’s performance received universal acclaim.
2. Revolutionary Road (2008)
While Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet had a doomed but fairytale romance in Titanic, their reunion almost a decade later was not as ‘Jack and Rose ’-y. Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road sees the lead stars be stuck in a loveless marriage and deal with their eventual break. The film is based on a book by Richard Yates is set in the ‘50s.
The film received positive acclaim from all around, most of them praising the powerhouse performances of DiCaprio and Winslet. Noted film historian and critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars and appreciated the two leads for stopping “being actors and becoming the people [he] grew up around” (via Chicago Sun-Times). Winslet received the Golden Globe for Best Actress for the film. However, she would go on to win the Oscar the same year for the film The Reader.
3. Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (2004)
One of the most beloved doomed romances of all time, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an amazing exploration of a tumultuous relationship with a magical realism setting. The film stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as two lovers who later undergo a memory-altering process to forget each other after their breakup.
Written by Charlie Kaufman, the film sees an in-form Carrey and Winslet as Joel and Clementine as they navigate their intense relationship through their memories and deal with the end of their brief affair. Though it is often regarded as a huge change of pace for Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet’s performance again garnered her an Oscar nomination and universal praise.
