Kate Winslet has been unlucky in love, said Justine Picardie in Harper’s Bazaar U.K. The actress lost her first love, Stephen Tredre, to bone cancer in 1997. Her first marriage ended in divorce in 2001. Last year brought the end of her second marriage, to director Sam Mendes, whom she wed in 2003. Though heartbroken over the divorce, she kept a tight lid on her feelings. “I kept pushing it away, not even sharing it a huge amount with friends,” she says. “Because you know what it’s like, as soon as you open that can of worms, you wish you’d never taken the lid off.”
For a film, she can shed a tear on command, but expressing real emotions proved challenging. “I’ve had to remind myself to have those moments of being able to have a good cry, but it did take someone putting their hand on me, a gay male friend, who put his hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘It’s okay, you can cry about this, and maybe you should.’” Acknowledging her grief has given her empathy for her ex. “The thing that I am very grateful for, weirdly, is that I’ve been through it before,” she says. “However hard it’s been for me, it’s been equally hard for him.”
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