The Essentials: The 10 Best Kate Winslet Performances

It’s amazing, and terrifying, to think that Kate Winslet turned 40-years-old yesterday, and has now been a movie star for 21 years. That’s one entire Ansel Elgort ago. Breaking out with a stunning performance in “Heavenly Creatures” while still just 18 (though she had credits in British TV stretching back into her earlier teens), Winslet has barely looked back since.

She followed her breakouts with high-profile Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Shakespeare adaptations, before starring in "Titanic," which went on to become one of the biggest movies of all time. Rather than capitalizing on her A-list status with more blockbusters, Winslet chose to make the movies she wanted to make with directors she wanted to make them with, picking out projects with the likes of Jane Campion, Philip Kaufman, Richard Eyre, and Alan Parker, before upending her period-movie image with another brilliant turn in “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.”

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