Kate Winslet Reflects on Telling the Story of ‘Lee’
Kate Winslet produced and stars as Lee Miller in Lee. The film is now playing in theaters nationwide.
Lee, the directorial feature from award-winning Cinematographer Ellen Kuras, portrays a pivotal decade in the life of American war correspondent and photographer, Lee Miller (Kate Winslet). Miller’s singular talent and unbridled tenacity resulted in some of the 20th century’s most indelible images of war, including an iconic photo of Miller herself, posing defiantly in Hitler’s private bathtub. Miller had a profound understanding and empathy for women and the voiceless victims of war. Her images display both the fragility and ferocity of the human experience. Above all, the film shows how Miller lived her life at full-throttle in pursuit of truth, for which she paid a huge personal price, forcing her to confront a traumatic and deeply buried secret from her childhood.
“In playing her, I mean, not only did I learn so much, but I came to admire her, to feel inspired by her and I wanted to tell this story about this decade of her life because, for me, this is when Lee became Lee. This is when she, as a 30 and 40-year-old woman, had the courage to go to war, get into male-dominated spaces, which she was not originally given permission to do,” she explained. “She kept going, she kept fighting. That sense of resilience that she had, as a woman, to go and document the atrocities of the Nazi regime for female readers because so much was hidden. These people were missing and she was determined to find out what had happened to them and to make sure that their story was not forgotten and that the truth was told, that even though it is a terrible, terrible truth, she just wouldn’t give up and I have so much admiration for her.”
I spoke with the actress about what she first thought when she read the quote, “I’d rather take a picture than be one,” why she has such admiration for Lee Miller, and learning to use the Rolleiflex camera.
Watch my interview below:
