How Kate Winslet’s Decades-Long Acting Career Prepared Her for Her Directorial Debut
The Oscar winner drew on relationships from 30 years in the entertainment industry and the experience she'd amassed in front of the camera for her star-studded Netflix film 'Goodbye June.'
For her directorial debut, Kate Winslet made a star-studded family drama, in which she was one of the actors, over just seven weeks, securing star Helen Mirren for only 16 days.
The schedule and Winslet’s dual roles were just some of the many challenges she faced helming Goodbye June.
“We were constantly trying to make sure that we were all making our days. I never wanted to drop anything, and I didn’t. I was very proud of that,” Winslet recently told The Hollywood Reporter at a special screening of the Netflix movie in New York, speaking of the shortened filming schedule. “We had seven children in the film as well as all of our adult actors, so just the constant juggle of that and being in front of the camera as well as behind it, just the juggle of it all we had to adapt to very quickly.”
Still, she “loved” the experience, she said, unprovoked, adding, when asked if she wants to direct again, “I really hope I do. I would love to direct again.”
And Winslet’s extensive acting career, including the bonds she’d developed with others in the industry through her 30 years in front of the camera, was key to this endeavor.
“Being able to really lean on great relationships that I’ve developed over the years, that was very meaningful, because we needed to have that sense of goodwill around us,” Winslet said, adding that it was imperative to have people who were “good humored, really willing and supportive of one another.”
For the role of June’s (Mirren) husband Bernie, Winslet approached Timothy Spall, with whom she’d worked 30 years before on a production of Hamlet, and it was this past experience as well as the strength of the script, written by Winslet’s son, Joe Anders, that convinced Spall to board the project.
“I knew that she was a very special person and a very special actress,” Spall told THR of Winslet at the Goodbye June screening. “When I read the script, I said I wouldn’t be able to do it because I was working too hard. But I read it the following day and told her I wanted to do it because it’s so fantastic. And she, I knew, would be all over it because of the way she spoke about it. It was so close to her and such a sense of what it was going to be about. Given her brilliance as an actress and what she’s experienced as an actress, I knew she’d be absolutely perfect. It was time for her to direct.”