'Lee' Exclusive Interview: Kate Winslet

Moviefone speaks with Oscar-winner Kate Winslet about new biopic 'Lee'. "I knew who Lee Miller was, but I did not know how unbelievably determined she was."

Kate Winslet stars in 'Lee'.

Opening in theaters on September 27th is the new biopic ‘Lee’, which chronicles the life of celebrated WWII photojournalist Lee Miller.

Directed by cinematographer Ellen Kuras (‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’), the film stars Academy Award winner Kate Winslet (‘Titanic’, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’) as Miller, as well as Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard (‘The Dark Knight Rises’), Oscar-nominee Andrea Riseborough (‘To Leslie’), Andy Samberg (‘Palm Springs’), Josh O’Connor (‘Challengers’), and Alexander Skarsgård (‘The Northman’).

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Kate Winslet about her work on ‘Lee’, her passion to get the movie made and tell this story, as well as Miller’s incredible determination and what Winslet admires most about her.

Related Article: Director James Cameron and Kate Winslet Talk 'Avatar: The Way of Water'

Kate Winslet 'Lee'. Photo: Roadside Attractions & Vertical.

Moviefone: To begin with, as both an actress and a producer, why you were so passionate about this project and why did you want to get Lee's story told?

Kate Winslet: I started developing the film in 2015, and I knew who Lee Miller was, I was familiar with her photography. But I did not know what she had gone through and how unbelievably determined she was to get permission to go to the front line and to document the war and the atrocities of the Nazi regime for female readers of British Vogue. I could see very clearly that history was in danger of pigeonholing her and defining her through the male gaze. She was described as the former muse and ex-lover of Man Ray, and she was an ex-cover girl, all this former stuff, like the interesting bits of her life had been and gone. But these kind of infantilizing descriptions of who she was, which really bothered me because Lee was a woman who lived many lives within her life, even beyond the war. But for me, this decade of history that we depict in our film was really when Lee became Lee. This was a flawed, middle-aged woman who had the compassion and determination to go and reveal the truth. She wasn't prepared to take no for an answer. She never took her foot off the gas, and I just had to become like that in trying to get the film made, and in playing her. It has been just an extraordinary privilege to have played this character, honestly.

(L to R) Andy Samberg and Kate Winslet in 'Lee'. Photo: Kimberley French.

MF: Finally, you mentioned Lee’s incredible determination, where do you think that came from and is that what you admired most about her?

KW: I mean, yes, it was one of many things that I admired about her, but in general, how Lee Miller walked through the world. I think she was born determined, and she carried herself with incredible grace and compassion. She was redefining femininity 80 years ago to mean resilience, strength, courage and power, all those things that we now as women are doing and we're raising our daughters that way, and that's how we are in our friendships. That was Lee. She was already doing that, so (she was an) incredibly contemporary person of her time. But Lee had suffered the most extraordinary, unimaginable trauma as a child, and she was told to never speak of it, and she didn't. She never told anyone. Consequently, she had a very powerful streak of injustice in her, and that meant whether it was, consciously or subconsciously, that she carried that injustice into her work and had a way of seeing the world that was different. She could see evil. She could see people in a way that meant her photography was unique. She was able to look down into that Rolleiflex camera at her image, but look up and meet people's gaze head on, and she was unafraid of doing that. That is what sets her work apart, and that is what war correspondents do. They take risks and they put themselves in terrifying situations, but they do it because they want to reveal the truth, and they want to make sure that nothing is hidden. Lee did that for the female readers of British Vogue at a time when not many other women were doing that at all.