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60 Minutes - Season 58 - Episode 17: Timothée Chalamet; Jamie Lee Curtis; Kate Winslet
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00:01Tonight, on this special edition of 60 Minutes presents A Night at the Movies.
00:13Timothee Chalamet pre-recorded all the Dylan songs he'd sing in the movie.
00:17They were supposed to be played back on set during filming.
00:20It always sounded too clean. The recording equipment's too clean now. The guitars are too good.
00:25Bob Dylan was drinking two bottles of red wine in a day, sometimes smoking 30 packs of cigarettes.
00:29Did you drink two bottles of wine and smoke 30 packs of alcohol?
00:32The smoking I did, the wine I held back on more.
00:38Four decades after she cemented her place in Hollywood with the horror movie Halloween,
00:44Jamie Lee Curtis is savoring a new wave of award-winning performances,
00:48playing a string of raw, volatile characters that suck the oxygen out of the room.
00:55Donna, the images in my mind of her buttering the bread with the nails and the eyelash on the cheek.
01:01The eyelash. That single eyelash, I think, won me an Emmy. I swear to God.
01:06Go. Go sit.
01:10When we met Kate Winslet outside London...
01:13OK, we're getting some of that.
01:14...we found the actress to be remarkably un-Hollywood...
01:19...and capable of sounding remarkably, well, un-British.
01:22Great, thank you.
01:23She's probably lying at the bottom of the Delaware River right now.
01:26And why is the filly so hard?
01:28It's actually the I sound in the Philadelphia and the Delco dialect that is really difficult.
01:34They don't say, that's nice.
01:37They say, that's nice.
01:38I like your bike.
01:48Good evening, I'm Anderson Cooper. Welcome to 60 Minutes Presents.
01:51Tonight, a night at the movies, featuring three acclaimed actors, each at a different point in their career.
01:58We'll spend some time with Jamie Lee Curtis, who's been making movies for more than four decades...
02:02...and has recently enjoyed a wave of award-winning performances.
02:06Then, we'll travel to England to meet with Kate Winslet, who starred in and produced Lee...
02:11...a movie about a photographer on the front lines during World War II.
02:15But we begin with Timothee Chalamet, who earned his third Oscar nomination this past week.
02:21This one for his role in the film, Marty Supreme.
02:24But it was his portrayal of Bob Dylan in a complete unknown that caught our attention last February.
02:31Bob Dylan is not just a singing and songwriting legend.
02:34He's one of the most enigmatic and reclusive musicians of our time.
02:38Playing him in a movie based on his life would be a daunting task for any actor.
02:43But when Timothee Chalamet was offered the role, he was 23.
02:47It says he knew practically nothing about Dylan.
02:50A lot of people told him not to do it, but Chalamet likes a creative challenge.
02:55He says he's never met Bob Dylan, but because of the pandemic, strikes in Hollywood and other film commitments...
03:01...Chalamet ended up having about five years to study the man and his music.
03:07Determined, like Bob Dylan was at his age, to make it great.
03:11I give 170 percent in everything. I'm doing no but there. I'm giving it my all.
03:18Something like the Dylan Project, these aren't watered-down experiences.
03:22I'm going Daniel Day-Lewis on all of them. I'm not saying in process, but I'm saying in level of
03:26commitment.
03:28And I don't know, man. It sounds like I'm desperate saying that or something.
03:30No, it sounds like you're a professional and you want it to be the best it can possibly be.
03:34Yeah, and increasingly I don't want to shy away from saying that.
03:38I stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains.
03:43Chalamet, who's 30 now, didn't just need to figure out how to sing like Dylan.
03:47He also learned how to play harmonica and guitar and about 40 Bob Dylan songs,
03:52far more than were originally called for in the script.
03:55It's a hard rain, I'm gonna fall.
04:04The movie, set in the early 1960s, follows Bob Dylan's rapid rise from obscurity to stardom,
04:11something Timothee Chalamet could relate to.
04:13I was young when I left home.
04:17I've been out rambling around.
04:20Dylan was 19 when he arrived in New York from Minnesota.
04:23A complete unknown, he quickly became an icon in the world of folk music.
04:28How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?
04:37Poetic and political, his song spoke to the times.
04:41And a young generation demanding change.
04:45And the first one now will later be last.
04:48For the times they are a-changing.
04:54Dylan got his start in New York at a nightclub called Cafe Wa in Greenwich Village.
04:59This was one of his, you know, jump points.
05:01This was like really a place where you could just go play folk music in the 60s, early 60s.
05:05And I went during the movie, during the production, and it ain't the same.
05:09What were they playing?
05:09Now it's Aerosmith covers and the ACDC and also worthy art.
05:16But different.
05:17Very different.
05:18When Chalamet started researching Dylan, he did what many millennials likely would.
05:23He looked him up on YouTube.
05:25He found this clip particularly insightful.
05:30Dylan performing on stage with Joan Baez, with whom he'd had a romantic relationship.
05:42What I love about the It Ain't Me performance is how playful it is and what a laugh he's having.
05:47He was the one, at least in the footnotes of history, that wasn't particularly, let's say, faithful with Joan.
05:54So I get it from his perspective that he's having such a laugh.
05:57On YouTube now, you can play things at 0.5 speed or 0.75 speed.
06:01And that was when I really slowed down because it's fascinating the way Bob observes her and how he refuses
06:10eye contact in that video.
06:12This is Chalamet's version, with Monica Barbaro playing Joan Baez.
06:28You weren't trying to imitate Bob Dylan.
06:30No, totally.
06:30That was the tension for me in doing a biopic on somebody so beloved and so well-known was,
06:35all right, where does my heart and where does my soul fit into this?
06:38Can it fit into this?
06:39Particularly with someone who was so masked.
06:42I put myself in another place.
06:46But I'm a stranger there.
06:48To connect with what might be behind Dylan's mask, Chalamet disconnected from his own life for the two and a
06:54half months of filming.
06:58Wouldn't use his cell phone or have visitors on set.
07:02I never approached a character so intensely as Bob because I had such respect for the material
07:05and I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I remember that I was lazy on a
07:09day where something went wrong.
07:14Chalamet pre-recorded all the Dylan songs he'd sing in the movie.
07:18They were supposed to be played back on set during filming.
07:21But it always sounded too clean.
07:23The recording equipment's too clean now.
07:25The guitars are too good.
07:27Bob Dylan was drinking two bottles of red wine a day sometimes smoking 30 packs of cigarettes.
07:30Did you drink two bottles of wine and smoke 30 packs of cigarettes?
07:33The smoking I did, the wine I held back on more.
07:37So Chalamet decided he wanted to try and sing and play live instead.
07:42This scene was the first time he did it.
07:45Dylan's just arrived in New York and visits his terminally ill hero, folk music legend Woody Guthrie, played by Scoot
07:51McNary.
07:52Edward Norton is Pete Seeger.
07:54On his first take, director James Mangold knew Chalamet nailed it.
07:59Hey, hey, what do you got three? I wrote you a song.
08:03There's a moment in that scene, right at the last stanza, where he holds a note.
08:09Here's to the hearts in the hands of the men.
08:19That would never have happened if we used the playback track.
08:23Was that in the song originally? Because, I mean, there was...
08:26No.
08:30The dust and her gun with the wind...
08:34He just did it.
08:35What I see Timmy executing in the scene is the growth of confidence within the song.
08:41So by the end of the song, not only is he finishing it, looking right at Woody, but he's also
08:47holding it.
08:49Which is like what a grand diva would do in the spotlight.
08:53You can't tell someone to do that.
08:55I'm not even sure Timmy completely plans it intellectually.
09:01That is that kind of talent.
09:05Did you know you were gonna do that? Was that a planned thing?
09:07Nope. And it would be disingenuous to my, you know, the way I like to act or my approach to
09:13stuff.
09:13You don't have any clue why you did it?
09:14No, I think it just happened. Yeah, truly.
09:22That may be true or it may not.
09:25Like Dylan, Chalamet is reluctant to talk about how he does what he does.
09:30If there's magic in acting, Timmy Chalamet doesn't want to give it all away.
09:35What's the concern about revealing the magic?
09:38It's nobody's business how I go about these things.
09:40It's within the law.
09:42It's within the law.
09:43Yeah, and otherwise it might not be as interesting as people think.
09:48Or it could be a lot more interesting than people think.
09:49It might be more interesting than what I'm doing.
09:51She's our friend. I'm her friend.
09:53What Chalamet's done in nearly two dozen films has been plenty interesting.
09:57In the Dune series, he transformed himself from the privileged son of a duke into a menacing messiah.
10:03I am Paul Moadive Atreides, Duke of Arrakis.
10:07It's no use, Joe. Joe, we've got to have it up.
10:10I have loved you ever since I've known you, Joe.
10:12He's played Laurie in Little Women and a love-struck teenager in Call Me By Your Name.
10:17Ah, where'd you learn to do that?
10:19I got nothing to offer but my chocolate.
10:23He took a risk reinventing Willy Wonka.
10:26This is your home.
10:30A world of your own.
10:33And his shape shifted between an adult drug addict and a reluctant King Henry V.
10:38So you basically grew up in the theater district?
10:41Yes, this is...
10:41As a child, Chalamet didn't dream of becoming an actor, though he was surrounded by them.
10:46He lived in this rent-subsidized apartment complex in Manhattan full of artists.
10:51Oh, Izzy!
10:52How you doing, man?
10:53What are you doing here?
10:54What's going on, man?
10:55Doing a little interview, baby.
10:55Good to see you.
10:56Growing up in this building certainly seems to have made an impression.
11:00This building, truthfully, made me scared of acting because it's a tough lifestyle and a lot of people, you know,
11:08aren't doing fantastically.
11:09It's a hard way to go with it.
11:11You would think growing up here, like, it would encourage you to be an actor but it actually...
11:16Wow.
11:16...and becoming an actor.
11:17His mom, Nicole Flender, was a dancer and works with the Actors' Equity Association.
11:22His sister, Pauline Chalamet, is an actress.
11:25And Timmy, as his friends and family call him, booked occasional acting jobs as a child.
11:30Though he told us he really wanted to be a professional soccer player.
11:34This is him on Law & Order when he was 12.
11:37Could you please not tell Mom and Dad about us playing Hexbox?
11:39But his father, Marc Chalamet, a French journalist, wasn't exactly pushing him to act.
11:44My dad, I think he very, very, very correctly, rightfully was wary growing up.
11:50It's no place for a child.
11:52It really isn't.
11:53You know, cameras and people going, hey, do the thing where we recognize you as cute in your own head.
11:59I think my dad was more just like, be normal.
12:00These days, that's easier said than done.
12:05I appreciate it, man.
12:07When we went to get a slice of pizza, he told us a turning point in his life was getting
12:11into LaGuardia High School,
12:13a famously competitive public school for the performing arts.
12:16It's a school that champions the arts.
12:19So there I doubled down.
12:20I was not a distracted kid as a teenager, like maybe to a fault.
12:23You know, I wasn't like partying or, I don't say that to come off straight lace, like to a fault.
12:28I was like very focused and driven.
12:32He was cast as the lead in school musicals.
12:35I'm the bravest individual I have ever met.
12:42And developed routines for LaGuardia's talent show as a rapper named Lil Timmy Tim.
12:50It's just humiliating, but I'll show you guys.
12:52He took us to the practice room in his building's basement where he'd rehearse.
12:57How old were you there?
12:58Here I'm 15, but I look like I'm seven.
13:01These are two good friends of mine, Sheree and Desiree.
13:02They're the only people in the world that did this talent show actively.
13:07I probably asked 35 people.
13:09He did go to college, Columbia University for a year, and then some classes at New York University.
13:14But he dropped out, wanting to focus on acting full time.
13:19Listen, man, I was, I was struggling.
13:22I was struggling.
13:24I was struggling with identity and I was struggling with your sense of self-respect, your sense of drive or
13:30where you want to be pales in comparison to where you are.
13:36Call Me By Your Name changed everything.
13:39He was 21 when it came out, around the same age Bob Dylan was when his career started to take
13:45off.
13:46Chalamet became the youngest person nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in nearly 80 years.
13:52We thought he'd relate to something Bob Dylan said about the meaning of destiny to Ed Bradley in a rare
13:59interview on 60 Minutes more than 20 years ago.
14:02It's a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does.
14:07The picture you have in your mind of what you're about will come true.
14:14That's kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self because it's a fragile feeling
14:19and you put it out there and somebody will kill it.
14:21So it's best to keep that all inside.
14:26Man, wow.
14:27You watch this interview a lot.
14:29Yeah, probably a thousand times, yeah.
14:31I always loved what he said about self-destiny being fragile.
14:34You believe that too, that if?
14:36I believe that especially early on in life in your career when you're in your early 20s or late teens.
14:41And if you can find a way to keep it quiet but also have a lot of confidence, it's the
14:45best path, you know.
14:46It's interesting to me that you still haven't met Bob Dylan.
14:48Nope. No.
14:50Is that weird to you?
14:51I mean, it's not, you know.
14:53He doesn't seem like he wants to be bothered by, not me, but by everyone in the last 60, 70
14:57years.
14:58What would you say to him?
14:59I would say thank you. I would just say thank you.
15:01You know what? That's ****. I'm going to take that back.
15:03I wouldn't, you know, honestly, I would honestly just be like, I would play it super cool, you know.
15:09Because I feel like he's probably used to so much hyperbole.
15:12Right.
15:12And praise.
15:13Right.
15:14Maybe I would try to out...
15:16Out-cool him?
15:16Out-bob him. Not cool, but out-bob him.
15:18Out-bob him.
15:18Yeah.
15:19Just like, strangely not bring anything up around him.
15:23Not even mention that you did the movie.
15:24Yeah.
15:25Maybe just talk about like...
15:26The weather.
15:26The weather and, you know, what his favorite sandwich is or something like that.
15:30Yeah.
15:39In Hollywood, it's not unusual for actors to try and fit the industry standard of beauty and marketability.
15:45Plotting every outfit and career move with the prowess of a chess master.
15:49But Jamie Lee Curtis is not one of them.
15:52Candid and spontaneous, she fearlessly calls it as she sees it, even when it comes to herself.
15:58And as Sharon Alfonsi first reported last year, at 67 years old, Curtis is savoring a new wave of award
16:05-winning performances.
16:06We asked her about her decades-long career.
16:09She told us it was anything but planned.
16:12My life hinged on a couple seconds I never saw coming.
16:16I never thought I'd be an actor in my life.
16:19My teeth were the color of concrete.
16:21They were gray.
16:22I was cute but not pretty.
16:24And so, I never saw that coming.
16:27She probably should have.
16:30Jamie Lee Curtis was born into Hollywood royalty.
16:33The daughter of screen idols Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, two of the biggest stars during the golden age of
16:39cinema.
16:40But Jamie Lee says she wanted to be a cop.
16:43She was home from college when a friend convinced her to audition for Universal Studios.
16:49I did the scene.
16:50And she said, that was very good or whatever.
16:52And I was like, okay, great, thanks.
16:54I said, listen, if this is going to work out, I need to know.
17:00Because I'm going back to college in like two days.
17:03Very practical.
17:04So like, she laughed or whatever.
17:06And they called me the next day and they gave me a seven-year contract at Universal.
17:11And I quit college.
17:13Almost immediately, she booked the 1978 horror film, Halloween.
17:18While I'm here tonight, I'm not about to let anything happen to you.
17:21Curtis was cast as the bookish babysitter, Laurie Strode, terrorized by an unrelenting killer.
17:27It was her first movie.
17:29She was 19 years old, playing the lead.
17:33Were people saying, oh, she got the job because of who her parents are, because of the pedigree?
17:37You know what? I know.
17:38I guarantee you the fact that my mother was in Psycho was a determining factor that maybe that will get
17:45them a little extra publicity.
17:46Now, did it get me to that final two? No.
17:51My auditions got me to the final two.
17:53This was a $300,000 horror movie.
17:56This was not a job that a lot of people wanted.
18:01Halloween ended up grossing more than $70 million and became a cult classic.
18:07But it didn't exactly launch Jamie Lee Curtis's career.
18:11My big break after Halloween was I was on Love Boat with Janet Leigh, beautiful Janet Leigh playing my mother.
18:19And then I was in a Charlie's Angels episode where I am Cheryl Ladd's best friend, pro golfer.
18:27So those are the two jobs I get post Halloween.
18:31Were you thinking at this point, like, people aren't hiring me, they just want my mom around or the name?
18:36You know what? Sure.
18:39But didn't that bother you?
18:42No, because, because I was doing my thing.
18:47Curtis's thing was transforming into a scream queen for a new generation with a string of horror movies.
18:54I read that you didn't even like scary movies.
18:58I don't like scary movies. Still?
18:59Still. Oh, please. Awful.
19:02Why?
19:02Awful.
19:04The smart aleck answer is because life is scary.
19:10It's a surprising thing to hear from an actress who's known for being fearless.
19:16Before that spin around the bedpost opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies, Curtis held her own next to Eddie Murphy
19:24and Dan Aykroyd in her first comedy feature, Trading Places, directed by John Landis.
19:30She says her role as Ophelia, a wise, kind-hearted street walker, is what really launched her career.
19:37You know those people?
19:38That part, I mean, she's gritty and the gum and the whole thing. How much of that did you bring
19:43to her?
19:43John stuck gum in my mouth every day.
19:46Literally, I would stand there and he'd walk up, I'd go, okay.
19:50I mean, you know, it's just a great part.
19:53But here's the other thing, and this is crucial and this will make the piece.
19:57If I'm not in Trading Places, John Cleese does not write A Fish Called Wanda for me.
20:02I'll treasure it.
20:03If I'm not in A Fish Called Wanda, Jim Cameron does not write the part in True Lies for me.
20:11And that groping of films gave me my career, for sure.
20:16If it all sounds like a fairy tale, it wasn't.
20:20By the mid-80s, Jamie Lee Curtis was a well-established actor when she made a movie with John Travolta
20:25called Perfect.
20:26By all accounts and from every angle, she was.
20:31I took it very seriously as an actor and, of course, I look really good in a leotard.
20:36And believe me, I've seen enough pictures of me in that leotard where even I go, like, really? Come on!
20:43But she says a cinematographer working on the film criticized the way she looked.
20:48I was like, yeah, I'm not shooting her today. Her eyes are baggy.
20:52And I was 25. So for him to say that was very embarrassing.
20:59So as soon as the movie finished, I ended up having some plastic surgery.
21:03And how did that go?
21:04Not well. That's just not what you want to do when you're 25 or 26.
21:09And I regretted it immediately and have kind of sort of regretted it since.
21:14Even now?
21:17Way so now because I've become a really public advocate to say to women, you're gorgeous and you're perfect the
21:25way you are.
21:25So, oh, yeah. It was not a good thing for me to do.
21:31That's when you started talking in public about this.
21:33Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:34You started taking painkillers.
21:35Well, they give them to you.
21:37I became very enamored with the warm bath of an opiate.
21:42You know, drank a little bit.
21:46Never to excess.
21:47Never any big public demonstrations.
21:51I was very quiet, very private about it.
21:53But it became a dependency for sure.
21:59Curtis says she's been sober for 26 years.
22:02Did you worry when you shared your story of how you got sober that it would impact your career?
22:09I think I worried more that selling yogurt that makes you s**t was going to impact my career than for
22:16me to acknowledge that I had an addiction.
22:18Um, I make the joke.
22:20It's a funny joke, but it's true.
22:22Take the Activia challenge now.
22:24It works or it's free.
22:26Ah, that yogurt commercial.
22:28Famously parodied by Saturday Night Live.
22:31Now the good news.
22:32I just discovered...
22:35Curtis, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, suddenly began selling pantyhose and hawking rental cars.
22:42Hertz came out on top.
22:43True Lies had made $400 million.
22:45You could have done anything you wanted to do.
22:48But you were taking those spokesperson jobs.
22:51Why?
22:52For the most part, because they allowed me to stay home with my kids.
22:56So, I am...
23:00I am an imperfect, you know, working mom.
23:05Because no working moms are perfect.
23:07It's all scotch tape together.
23:09I'm looking at one.
23:11You're speaking to one.
23:13Mm-hmm.
23:13We make it look good.
23:16We think we've done it.
23:17But the truth is, we feel badly.
23:22But I know how much time away from them I spent in pursuit of my own creativity.
23:30Curtis has two children with Christopher Guest, the actor and director best known for This Is Spinal Tap.
23:37It's famous for its sustain.
23:39I mean, you can just hold it...
23:41Well, I mean...
23:41And taking aim at dog shows and even filmmaking in a series of mockumentaries.
23:47They've been married for more than 40 years.
23:50My mother was married four times.
23:52My father was married five times.
23:54That's nine.
23:55My stepfather was married three.
23:56So, I come from an immediate family of 12 marriages.
24:02Mm.
24:04So, my joke, I'm still married to my first husband.
24:09You know, it was important to me that I stay married to my husband, that he's my husband.
24:17Did you ever pass a role that you wish you had taken?
24:19No.
24:20Once their kids were grown, Curtis traded in carpool duty for unapologetically driving her own career.
24:27We're going this way.
24:28She runs her own production company, which has a TV series in the works starring Nicole Kidman and a feature
24:35film about the catastrophic paradise wildfires in 2018.
24:39She's also running her own charity.
24:42Curtis has raised over a million dollars for Children's Hospital Los Angeles and donated another million to victims of the
24:49recent wildfires,
24:50which destroyed much of Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, including this home, where she filmed the millennial hit Freaky Friday
24:59and its sequel Freakier Friday.
25:02And four decades after the first Halloween, she finally put that franchise to rest.
25:10But it is a string of raw, vulnerable characters that came to Curtis in her 60s that led to a
25:17comeback even she never imagined.
25:19You know, I mean, he's cute-ish.
25:23Playing the aging waitress in The Last Showgirl.
25:26I could also get you a job.
25:27Or sucking the oxygen out of the kitchen as the combustible matriarch, Donna Brazzato, in Hulu's TV series, The Bear.
25:36Donna, the images in my mind of her buttering the bread with the nails and the eyelash on the cheek.
25:43The eyelash. That single eyelash, I think, won me an Emmy. I swear to God.
25:48Go. I'm good. Go. Go sit.
25:51I've waited my whole life for Donna.
25:56Patiently, quietly cooking.
25:59My own creative, mental life.
26:03My own, you know, my own alcoholism.
26:13It's just so beautifully written that you don't have to do anything.
26:17But it was 2022's mystical, somewhat mind-bending, everything, everywhere, all at once, that pushed Jamie Lee Curtis out of
26:26her comfort zone.
26:28Did you understand that role when you got it?
26:30Of course not.
26:31Not one second of it.
26:32Did I understand that script?
26:33No.
26:34With nothing but a stack of receipts, I can trace the ups and downs.
26:40Curtis says she did understand Deirdre Bobirdre, the hard-boiled bureaucrat from hell.
26:46It does not look good.
26:49We all know Deirdre.
26:51She's a woman who's not loved.
26:54She's a woman who uses her power in her job to control people because she has no love in her
27:02life.
27:02Curtis was unrecognizable, but her performance did not go unnoticed.
27:07Jamie Lee Curtis!
27:12Before the moment, though, first, when they call your name.
27:15Yes.
27:16You say, I think...
27:18Shut up.
27:20Totally.
27:20Because that wasn't supposed to happen.
27:23Your mom never won an Oscar.
27:26Dad never won an Oscar.
27:27No, they didn't.
27:28They were both nominated.
27:29Does this make you feel like you're on even footing with your parents who were these gigantic stars?
27:35I think about surpassing my parents, which I have, emotionally.
27:43I've surpassed my parents with sobriety.
27:47My mother was restricted by what the industry wanted from her and expected from her and would allow from her.
27:57My mother would have hated The Last Showgirl because I showed what I really looked like.
28:05And so I have, I don't want to say surpassed them, but I have freedom.
28:15The morning after her Oscar win, a photographer asked Curtis to recreate a photo of actress Faye Dunaway and her
28:22statue from nearly 50 years ago.
28:24She agreed with one condition.
28:27And I said to him, yeah, but I won't do it seriously. We have to make it funny.
28:36Jamie Lee Curtis hasn't just embraced imperfection. She's made it an art.
28:46Revisiting cinema history.
28:48She never took a shower again.
28:52At 60minutesovertime.com.
29:02Kate Winslet was just 20 years old when she was plucked from relative obscurity to star in Titanic.
29:08She's had her pick of lead roles ever since.
29:11Film critics we spoke to compare her to greats like Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep.
29:16Winslet has a propensity for playing tough, angst-ridden women, and that's exactly who she became in the film Lee,
29:23which she also produced about American photographer Lee Miller, one of the few female journalists on the front lines of
29:30World War II.
29:31Cecilia Vega met Winslet back in 2024 at the theater where she performed as a teenager and found her to
29:38be remarkably un-Hollywood.
29:40She drove herself to the interview, showed up alone, and dropped a few F-bombs.
29:47Well, the idea of going back on this stage still terrifies me.
29:50So how do you get over the nerves? What do you tell yourself?
29:53Oh, honestly, it's a whole bunch of mind f***ing.
29:57I mean, it is even to this day.
30:00Like anything, going for a job interview, it's absolutely terrifying if it's a job you really want.
30:05Doubly terrifying.
30:06You've said on the first day you walk in and think, everyone is in here thinking, why did they cast
30:12her?
30:12Yeah. Oh, my God.
30:15You are an Oscar-winning actress.
30:18So what? When I was doing Lee, I would sit there and I would say, this is ridiculous.
30:23I can truly think of at least five other brilliant actresses who would have played this part much better than
30:27me.
30:28Like, a lot better.
30:29And often I will turn to another crew member and I'll say, they just read the wrong name off the
30:33list.
30:34I'm telling you, they didn't mean for me to be here.
30:37And I will have days where...
30:38Meryl's coming out of the back door now to take your role.
30:41Welcome. Come on in.
30:43Delighted to have you.
30:45You must be Lee Miller.
30:47Well, it's a war zone, Colonel. Just Lee is fine.
30:51That role that caused Kate Winslet so much angst was for the movie Lee.
30:56She didn't just star in it, she made it, her first as a producer.
31:06How much time did you spend at this house?
31:09Oh, my God. I mean, a lot of time across seven years, yeah.
31:13Those years were spent at Lee Miller's estate in the English countryside, where she lived with her husband, a British
31:20painter.
31:21It's where, with the help of Miller's son, Winslet scoured the archives and decided to focus Miller's life story not
31:28on her history as a model who had many lovers.
31:31We don't hire older models.
31:33Don't blow a gasket. I'm not a model anymore.
31:37But as a troubled woman, who in her late 30s left her glamorous life to become a war photographer, capturing
31:44some of the most haunting images from World War II, including some of the first uses of napalm and Nazi
31:51concentration camps.
31:52Winslet says she knew it wouldn't be an easy sell.
31:56Tell me a little bit about what some of those phone calls were like.
32:00There was one potential investor who said to me, why should I like this woman?
32:03I mean, she's drunk. She's, you know, she's, like, loud.
32:07She's, like, I mean, he just probably stopped short of saying, she has wrinkles on her face.
32:12You had a director say something like, I'll get your little Lee funded?
32:17Yeah.
32:18You want to share names now?
32:19No, never, never, no. That's not my vibe. No.
32:23No, but so this director did say, yeah, tell you what, if you be in my film, I'll help you
32:27get your little Lee Miller film made.
32:29And he actually went like that.
32:32And I was like, might just have lost signal.
32:34Oop.
32:35She didn't make the movie with those men.
32:38Instead, she insisted on bringing in a female director, co-producer and writers.
32:48Winslet was intimately involved in every step of production, as we saw during a scoring session.
32:59Uh, Kate?
33:01Yeah.
33:02It doesn't feel too loud to you, does it?
33:04Well, it's funny.
33:06Okay, it's too loud. Let's do it again.
33:08She also enlisted a historian to make an exact replica of Miller's camera and really took pictures while she was
33:16acting.
33:17Why did you feel like you had to learn this craft?
33:21It couldn't just be a prop.
33:23It needed to feel like an extension of my arms.
33:26I had to be confident and comfortable with it.
33:28And in order to do that, I had to know what I was doing.
33:30She spends months, even years, preparing for roles, inventing an elaborate backstory for every character, down to what sport they
33:39played in school and how they feel about their mothers.
33:42You know me. I'm impulsive.
33:44She's learned to dig for fossils, make dresses, and free dive, holding her breath for more than seven minutes for
33:51Avatar 2.
33:54And she's not afraid of being exposed.
33:57All right. Make me invisible.
34:00Because to see a Kate Winslet movie often means you'll see a lot of Kate Winslet.
34:07Let's see what happens.
34:09And then there's the accents.
34:11Yeah, there she is. Down at Easttown.
34:14She won an Emmy for mayor of Easttown, playing a vaping, beer-swigging detective, nailing the specific sound of Delaware
34:22County, a Philadelphia suburb.
34:25She's probably lying at the bottom of the Delaware River right now.
34:28And why is the filly so hard?
34:30It's actually the I sound in the Philadelphia and the Delco dialect that is really difficult.
34:36They don't say, that's nice. They say, that's nice. I like your bike.
34:43And though she may seem like someone with a shelf full of Oscars, she won her first and only in
34:492009 for her portrayal of a Nazi prison guard in The Reader.
34:54I want to take out a book.
34:56For years, she kept the statue in her bathroom so guests could hold it up in the mirror and pretend
35:01to win.
35:03I used to get the bus into town a lot.
35:05We went with Winslet to Reading, the working class town just outside London where she was born and raised.
35:12This is the house?
35:13Oh my God, this is the house.
35:15The front door boarded up. Her family no longer lives here.
35:18I lived here until when I was sort of 16 and I kind of left home really when I was
35:2416.
35:25Winslet is the second of four children.
35:27Her father was a struggling actor who often gave his daughter the advice she still lives by.
35:33You're only as good as your last gig.
35:35He would sort of hop from job to job and then he would do, you know, part time work to
35:39make ends meet in the meantime.
35:41But the thing that was interesting, I think, is that even though there was so little, as you can see,
35:48to go around, we were really happy.
35:51With financial help from a charity for actors, she enrolled in a local theatre school when she was 11, catching
35:57the train into London for auditions.
36:00She says the scrutiny of her appearance started young.
36:03You once had a drama teacher tell you, settle for the fat girl parts?
36:08Oh yeah. Now listen, Kate, I'm telling you, darling, if you're going to look like this, you'll have to settle
36:16for the fat girl parts.
36:17And I wasn't, I was never even fat.
36:20What did that do to your, your spirit, your confidence?
36:23It made me think, I'll just show you, just quietly.
36:26It was like a sort of a quiet, uh, determination, really.
36:31Yeah, I'll just go in.
36:32This grocery store was once the deli where 16-year-old Winslet was working when she got the news that
36:38she'd landed her first movie.
36:40And I was making a sandwich and this, the phone rang and I swear to God, there was something about
36:45the way the phone rang.
36:46You knew?
36:47I was like, oh my God, that's for me. I wonder if it's about the job.
36:50And then the owner was like, hey, phone for you.
36:53I thought, oh my God.
36:54So I ran and, and, uh, was told that I'd gotten this part.
36:59And then I was just so unraveled.
37:01I had to leave.
37:02I was like, oh God, I have to go home and tell mom and dad.
37:05After filming that first movie, Heavenly Creatures, Winslet went right back to making sandwiches.
37:11That must have been kind of a, what is going on in my world here?
37:14No, because that was what I knew.
37:15You know, my dad would do jobs and he'd go back to, you know, tarmacking the roads or working as
37:20a postman.
37:21Or, so I just thought, oh, well that's what you do as an actor.
37:23You know, if you're lucky you get a job and then you go back to a day job.
37:27At 20, she got the offer for the part that would make Hollywood history.
37:35Playing Rose opposite Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack in Titanic, the first film to break a billion dollars at the box
37:42office.
37:44Winslet was game to discuss just about anything, but...
37:48Let's talk about Titanic.
37:50Really?
37:51I was wondering what your reaction would be if I said that to you.
37:55No, I'm happy to talk about Titanic.
37:57I guess it wouldn't be an interview with you if we didn't talk about Titanic in some way.
38:02It wouldn't be an interview without it.
38:03We tried to ask about the famous scene that has sparked decades of debates.
38:08I'll never let go. I promise.
38:12May I ask, true Leo really could have fit on the raft?
38:18Do you know what? I have no idea.
38:21Does it annoy you at all that 27 years later this movie still comes up in this way and probably
38:27will for the rest of your life?
38:29No.
38:30I tell you, what I do sometimes find just curious, I suppose, is whatever I say about Titanic will often
38:40be the take home.
38:40So I just think, oh, well, there were those things that I said about the film I was talking about,
38:45and yet that's the one thing.
38:47So that's the only thing that sometimes I just think, hmm.
38:51Where to, miss?
38:54To the stars.
38:56While Titanic made Winslet a star, she says it came at a cost.
39:01Paparazzi aggressively pursued her and just listened to how she was ridiculed for her weight.
39:07The cake's a little melted and poured into that dress.
39:10And, you know, she just needed two sizes large and it would probably have been okay.
39:13I gasped at how cruel some of that coverage was of you at that time.
39:18Mm.
39:19I know.
39:21It's absolutely appalling.
39:23What kind of a person must they be to do something like that to a young actress who's just trying
39:30to figure it out?
39:31Did you ever get face-to-face with any of those people?
39:34I did get face-to-face.
39:36What did you say?
39:37I let them have it.
39:39I said, I hope this haunts you.
39:51It was a great moment.
39:54Huh.
39:59It was a great moment because it wasn't just for me.
40:04It was for all those people who were subjected to that level of harassment.
40:08It was horrific.
40:10It was really bad.
40:13Now 49, Winslet says she developed an armor that she brings to characters like Lee Miller.
40:19People say, oh, you were so brave for this role.
40:21You didn't wear any makeup.
40:24You know, you had wrinkles.
40:25Do we say to the men, oh, you were so brave for this role.
40:28You grew a beard.
40:30No, we don't.
40:31Does that still happen to you?
40:32Yes.
40:32Happens to me all the time.
40:34It's not brave.
40:36It's playing the part.
40:38Is it true that a crew member came up to you and said you might want to kind of sit
40:43up a little bit?
40:44You're showing a lump.
40:46Yeah.
40:47You might want to kind of just sit in, suck in, sit up.
40:51And I was like...
40:53You didn't.
40:55I don't think Lee would have done.
40:56It's about knowing that Lee's, her ease with her physical self was hard won.
41:03In Hollywood, you could have a lot of great lights so that you don't see the lump that we all
41:07have, the bumps that we all have.
41:09You know, I'm done.
41:10You don't care about showing that.
41:11No, I don't.
41:12I don't.
41:13Why not?
41:14It's exhausting.
41:16Mm-hmm.
41:16When she's not filming, Winslet lives far from the spotlight in a quiet English seaside village.
41:22She and her husband, Ned Abel Smith, have a 10-year-old son.
41:26She also has a 20-year-old son and 24-year-old daughter from previous marriages.
41:32Winslet is not on social media and told us she doesn't read reviews of her work, but this much she
41:38knows.
41:39It's hard to make films about historical female figures.
41:43You know, typically those aren't films that would necessarily do well in the box office.
41:47So she's sitting here proudly telling you that her film has taken over 25 million so far.
41:52Cha-ching!
41:52And we made a film about one woman.
41:55So there's not a sense of, I told you so?
41:58No, I don't feel like that, but I just hope they've seen the film.
42:09I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for joining us.
42:12We'll be back next week with an all new edition of 60 Minutes.
42:18I want to know what's going on in the world.
42:20You can't do that if you're just sitting in a chair reading about what other people have found.
42:26You have to get out there and listen.
42:28By telling people about each other, you actually bring this country together.
42:33There are big questions that all of us are asking.
42:37I want to get you the answers.
42:39I'm Tony DiCopoli.
42:40Join me on the CBS Evening News.
42:47Go to the ends of the earth.
42:49We'll hit the heights.
42:50Reach for the stars.
42:52Star power.
42:52I like it.
42:53Experience thought provoking.
42:55Something that's undeniable.
42:57Ta-da!
42:57And truly original reporting.
43:00I'm in on this.
43:00There's always something new under the sun on CBS Sunday Morning.
43:05There's even just a bunch of questions in the sky.
43:05God bless.ói
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