60 Minutes - 01/25/2026: Timothée Chalamet, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kate Winslet

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Last January, correspondent Anderson Cooper spent a couple of days with Timothée Chalamet to find out how he prepared for more than five years to play one of the most enigmatic and revered musicians of our time for his film “A Complete Unknown”, which earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi talks with Jamie Lee Curtis in Los Angeles about her long career in Tinseltown and about her recent wave of award-winning performances that came to her in her 60s. Correspondent Cecilia Vega travels to the U.K. for an intimate portrait of actor Kate Winslet. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight, on this special edition of 60 Minutes Presents, A Night at the Movies. Once upon a time, you're just so fine. Do the bumps a dime in your prime. Timothy Shalameh pre-recorded all the Dylan songs he'd sing in the movie. They were supposed to be played back on set during filming. It always sounded too clean. The recording equipment's too clean now.

The guitars are too good. Bob Dylan was drinking two bottles of red wine. In a day, sometimes it's smoking 30 packs of cigarettes. Did you drink two bottles of wine and smoke? 30-packs time. I'm like, the smoking I did, the wine I held back on more. Four decades after she cemented her place in Hollywood with the horror movie Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis is savoring a new wave of award-winning performances,

playing a string of raw, volatile characters that suck the oxygen out of the room. Donna, the images in my mind of her buttering the bread with the nails and the eyelash on the cheek. The eyelash. That single eyelash, I think, won me and Emmy. I swear to God. Go. Go sit. When we met Kate Winslet outside London... Okay, we're getting some of that.

We found the actress to be remarkably un-Hollywood. Thank you. And capable of sounding, remarkably, well, un-British. She's probably lying at the bottom of the Delaware River right now. And why is the Philly so hard? It's actually the eye sound in the Philadelphia, in the Delco dialect that is really difficult. They don't say, that's nice.

They say, that's nice. I like your bike. Good evening, I'm Anderson Cooper. Welcome to 60 Minutes Presents. Tonight, a night at the movies, featuring three acclaimed actors, each at a different point in their career. We'll spend some time with Jamie Lee Curtis, who's been making movies for more than four decades

and has recently enjoyed a wave of award-winning performances. Then we'll travel to England to meet with Kate Winslet, who starred in and produced Lee, a movie about a photographer on the front lines during World War II. But we begin with Timothy Salome, who earned his third Oscar nomination this past week, this one for his role in the film Marty Supreme. But it was his portrayal of Bob Dylan in a complete unknown that caught our attention last February. Bob Dylan is not just a singing and songwriting legend.

He's one of the most enigmatic and reclusive musicians of our time. playing him in a movie based on his life would be a daunting task for any actor. But when Timothy Chalemay was offered the role, he was 23, and says he knew practically nothing about Dylan. A lot of people told him not to do it, but Chalemay likes a creative challenge. He says he's never met Bob Dylan, but because of the pandemic, strikes in Hollywood and other film commitments, Shalemate ended up having about five years to study the man and his music. determined like Bob Dylan was at his age to make it great. I give 170% and everything.

I'm doing no but there. I'm giving it my all. Something like the Dylan Project, these aren't watered down experiences. I'm going Daniel DeLewis on all of them. I'm not saying in process, but I'm saying a level of commitment. And I don't know, man, it sounds like I'm desperate saying that or something.

No, it sounds like you're a professional and you want it to be the best it can possibly be. Yeah, and increasingly, I don't want to, shy away from saying that. I stumble on the side of 12 misty mountains. Shalameh, who's 30 now, didn't just need to figure out how to sing like Dylan. He also learned how to play harmonica and guitar and about 40 Bob Dylan songs, far more than were originally called for in the script.

The movie set in the early 1960s follows Bob Dylan's rapid rise from obscurity to stardom, something Timothy Shalame could relate to. I was young when I left home. I've been out of rambling around. Dylan was 19 when he arrived in New York from Minnesota. A complete unknown, he quickly became an icon in the world of folk music. How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man. Poetic and political, his song spoke to the times.

and a young generation demanding change. And the first one now will later be last for the times they are changing. Dylan got his start in New York at a nightclub called Cafe Wah in Greenwich Village. This was one of his jump points. This was really a place where you could just go play folk music in the 60s, early 60s.

And I went during the movie, during the production, and it ain't the same. What were they playing? Now it's Aerosmith covers and the ACDC, also worthy art, but different. Very different. When Chalemay started researching Dylan, he did what many millennials likely would.

He looked him up on YouTube. He found this clip particularly insightful, Dylan performing on stage with Joan Baez, with whom he'd had a romantic relationship. Oh, but it ain't me, ain't me, babe. What I love about the It Ain't Me performance, How playful it is, and what a laugh he's having. He was the one, at least in the footnotes of history,

that wasn't particularly, let's say, faithful with Joan. So I get it from his perspective that he's having such a laugh. On YouTube now, you could play things at 0.5 speed or 0.75 speed. And that was when I really slowed down, because it's fascinating the way Bob observes her and how he refuse his eye contact in that video. This is Salomey's version. with Monica Barbaro playing Joan Baez.

It ain't me, it ain't me you're looking for baby. You weren't trying to imitate Bob Dylan. That was the tension for me in doing a biopic on somebody so beloved and so well known was, all right, where does my heart and where does my soul fit into this? Can it fit into this? Particularly with someone who was so masked. I put myself in another place, but I'm a stranger there.

To connect with what might be behind Dylan's mask, Chalemay disconnected from his own life for the two and a half months of filming. Wouldn't use his cell phone or have visitors on set. I've never approached a character so intensely as Bob because I had such respect for the material and I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I remember that I was lazy on a day where something went wrong. Shalamee pre-recorded all the Dylan songs he'd sing in the movie. They were supposed to be played back on set during filming. But it always sounded too clean. The recording equipment's too clean now. The guitars are too good.

Bob Dylan was drinking two bottles of red wine. A day, sometimes smoking 30 packs of cigarettes. Did you drink two bottles of wine and smoke 30 packs of like it? The smoking I did, the wine I held back on more. So Chalamay decided he wanted to try and sing and play live instead. This scene was the first time he did it. Dylan's just arrived in New York and visits his terminally ill hero, folk music legend Woody Guthrie, played by Scoot McNary.

Edward Norton is Pete Seeger. On his first take, director James Mangold knew Shalemay nailed it. Hey, hey, what do you got three? I wrote you a song. There's a moment in that scene right at the last stanza where he holds a note. Here's to the hearts in the hands of the men. It come. That would never have happened if we'd use the playback track. Was that in the song originally?

Because, I mean, there was... No. The dust and her gone with the wind. He just did it. What I see Timmy executing in the scene is the growth of confidence within the song. So by the end of the song, not only is he finishing it, looking right at Woody, but he's also holding it, which is like what a grand diva would do in the spotlight. You can't tell someone. to do that. I'm not even sure Timmy completely plans it intellectually. That is, that is that kind of

talent. Did you know you were going to do that? Was that a plan thing? No, and it would be disingenuous to my, you know, the way I like to act or my approach to stuff. You don't have any clue why you did it? No, they just happened, yeah, truly. That may be true or it may not. Like Dylan, Shalame is reluctant to talk about how he does what he does. If there's magic in acting, Timothy Shalamay doesn't want to give it all away. What's the concern about revealing the magic? It's nobody's business how I go about these things. It's within the law.

It's within the law. And otherwise, it might not be as interesting as people think. Or it could be a lot more interesting than people think. It might be more interesting than what I'm doing. She's our friend. I'm her friend. What Chalemay's done in nearly two dozen films has been plenty interesting. In the Dune series, he transformed himself from the privileged son of a Duke into a menacing Messiah.

I am Paul Baudi Bredi's, Duke of Iraqis. It's no use, Joe. Joe, we've got to have it out. I have loved you ever since I've known you, Joe. He's played Lori and Little Women and a love-struck teenager in Call Me by Your Name. Ah, where you learn to do that? He took a risk reinventing Willy Wonka. This is your home, a world of your own.

And his shape shifted between an adult drug addict and a reluctant King Henry V. So you basically grew up in the theater district? Yes, this is... As a child, Shalome didn't dream of becoming an actor, though he was surrounded by them. He lived in this rent-subsidized apartment complex in Manhattan full of artists. Oh, is he? How you doing, man. What are you going here?

What's going on, right? Doing up in this building certainly seems to have made an impression. This building truthfully made me scared of acting because it's a tough lifestyle. A lot of people, you know, aren't doing... It's a hard way to work with them. You would think growing up here, like, it would encourage you to be an actor, but actually... It would actually terrify me of becoming an actor. His mom, Nicole Flendor, was a dancer and works with the Actors Equity Association.

Equity Association. His sister, Pauline Chalame, is an actress, and Timmy, as his friends and family call him, booked occasional acting jobs as a child, though he told us he really wanted to be a professional soccer player. This is him on Law and Order when he was 12. Could you please not tell Mom and Dad about us playing Xbox? But his father, Mark Chalamee, a French journalist, wasn't exactly pushing him to act. My dad, I think he very, very, very correctly, rightfully was wary growing up. It's no way. place for a child. It really isn't. You know, cameras, people going, hey, do the thing where we recognize you as cute in your own head. I think my dad was more just like, be normal. These

days, that's easier said than done. I appreciate it, man. When we went to get a slice of pizza, he told us a turning point in his life was getting into LaGuardia High School, a famously competitive public school for the performing arts. It's a school that champions the arts, so there I doubled down. I was not a I was kind of distracted kid as a teenager, like, maybe to a fault. You know, I wasn't, like, partying or... I don't say that to come off straight lace.

Like, to a fault, I was, like, very focused and driven. He was cast as the lead in school musicals. I'm the bravest individual I have ever met. And develop routines for Liguardia's talent show as a rapper named Lil Timmy Tim. It's just humiliating, but I'll show you guys. He took us to the practice room in his building's basement where he'd rehearse. How old were you there?

Here I'm 15, but I look like I'm 7. These are two good friends of mine, Shereen Desiree. They're the only people in the world that did this talent show act with me. I probably asked 35 people. He did go to college, Columbia University for a year, and then some classes at New York University. But he dropped out, wanting to focus on acting full time. Listen, man, I was struggling.

I was struggling. I was struggling with identity and I was struggling with your sense of self-respect, your sense of drive or where you want to be pales in comparison to where you are. Call Me By Your Name changed everything. He was 21 when it came out. Around the same age, Bob Dylan was when his career started to take off. Shalomey became the youngest person nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in nearly 80 years. We thought he'd relate to something Bob Dylan said about the meaning of destiny to Ed Bradley in a rare interview on 60 Minutes more than 20 years ago. It's a feeling you have that you know something about yourself, nobody else does. The picture you have in your mind of what you're about will come true. That's kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self

because it's a fragile feeling and you put it out there or somebody will kill it. So it's best to keep that all inside. Man, wow. You watch this interview a lot. Yeah, probably a thousand times, yeah. I always love what he said about self-destiny being fragile. You believe that, too, that if...

I believe that, especially early on in life in your career when you're in your early 20s or late teens. And if you can find a way to keep it quiet, but also have a lot of confidence, It's the best path, you know. It's interesting to me that you still haven't met Bob Dylan. Nope. No.

Is that weird to you? I mean, it's not, you know. He doesn't seem like he wants to be bothered by, not me, but by everyone in the last 60, 70 years. What would you say to him? I would say thank you. I would just say thank you. You know what, that's . I'm gonna take that back.

I wouldn't, you know, I honestly, I would honestly just be like, uh, I would play it super cool, you know? Uh-huh. Because I feel like he's probably used to so much hyperbole. Right. In praise. Right. Maybe I would try to out. Out-cool him?

Out-bob him. Not cool, but out-bob him. Yeah. Just, like, strangely not bring anything up around him. Not even mention that you did. Yeah. Maybe just talk about, like, the weather. The weather and, you know, what his favorite sandwiches or something like that.

Yeah. What's up, guys? It's Candace Dillard Bassett, former Real Housewife of Potomac. And I'm Michael Arsino, author of the New York Times bestseller, I Can't Date Jesus. And this is Undomesticated. The podcast, where we on. aren't just saying the quiet parts out loud. We're putting it all on the kitchen table and inviting you to the function.

If you're ready for some bold takes and a little bit of chaos, welcome to undomesticated. Follow and listen to Undomesticated, available wherever you get your podcasts. In Hollywood, it's not unusual for actors to try and fit the industry's standard of beauty and marketability, plotting every outfit and career move with the prowess of a chess master. But Jamie Lee Curtis is not one of them. Candid and spontaneous, she fearlessly calls it as she sees it, even when it comes to herself. And as Sharon Alfonzi first reported last year, at 67 years old, Curtis is savoring a new wave of award-winning performances. We asked her about her decades-long career. She told us it was anything but planned. My life hinged on a couple seconds I never saw coming. I never thought I'd be an actor in my life.

My teeth were the color of concrete. They were gray. I was cute but not pretty. And so I never saw that coming. She probably should have. Jamie Lee Curtis was born into Hollywood royalty, the daughter of screen idols Tony Curtis and Janet Lee, two of the biggest stars during the golden age of cinema.

But Jamie Lee says she wanted to be a cop. She was home from college when a friend convinced her to audition for Universal Studios. I did the scene, and she said, that was very good or whatever. And I was like, okay, great, thanks. I said, listen, if this is going to work out, I need to know, because I'm going back to college in like two days. Very practical.

So, like, she laughed or whatever. And they called me the next day, and they gave me a seven-year contract at Universal. And I quit college. Almost immediately, she booked the 1978 horror film Halloween. While I'm here tonight, I'm not about to let me. anything happened to you. Curtis was cast as the bookish babysitter, Lori Strode, terrorized by an unrelenting killer.

It was her first movie. She was 19 years old playing the lead. Were people saying, oh, she got the job because of her parents are, because of the pedigree? I know. I guarantee you the fact that my mother was in Psycho was a determining factor that maybe that will get them a little extra publicity.

Now, did it get me to that? Final two? No. My auditions got me to the final two. This was a $300,000 horror movie. This was not a job that a lot of people wanted. Halloween ended up grossing more than $70 million and became a cult classic. But it didn't exactly launch Jamie Lee Curtis's career. My big break after Halloween was I was on Love Boat with Janet Lee, beautiful Janet Lee playing my mother. And then I was in a Charlie's Angels episode where I am Cheryl Ladd's best friend, pro golfer. So those are the two jobs I get post-Hallowing. Were you thinking at this point, like, people aren't hiring me, they just want my mom around or the name?

You know what? Sure. But didn't that bother you? No. Because, because I was doing my thing. Curtis's thing was transforming into a scream queen for a new generation with a string of horror movies. I read that you didn't even like scary movies. I don't like scary movies.

Still? Still? Oh, please. Awful. Why? Awful. The smart aleck answer is because life is scary. It's a surprising thing to hear from an actress who's known for being fearless.

Before that spin around the... bedpost opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies, Curtis held her own next to Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd in her first comedy feature, Trading Places, directed by John Landis. She says her role as Ophelia, a wise, kind-hearted streetwalker, is what really launched her career. That part, I mean, she's gritty and the gum and the whole thing. How much of that did you bring to her? John stuck gum in my mouth every day. Literally I would stand there. and he'd walk up, I go, okay. I mean, it's, you know, it's just a great part.

But here's the other thing, and this is crucial, and this will make the piece. If I'm not in trading places, John Cleese does not write a fish called Wanda for me. I'll treasure it. If I'm not in a fish called Wanda, Jim Cameron does not write the part in true lies for me. And that grouping of films gave me my career, for sure.

If it all sounds like a fairy tale, it wasn't. By the mid-80s, Jamie Lee Curtis was a well-established actor when she made a movie with John Travolta called Perfect, by all accounts, and from every angle, she was. I took it very seriously as an actor, and of course I look really good in a leotard. And believe me, I've seen enough pictures of me and that leotard, where even I go, like, really? Come on!

But she says a cinematographer working on the film criticized the way she looked. I was like, yeah, I'm not shooting her today. Her eyes are baggy. And I was 25. So for him to say that was very embarrassing. So as soon as the movie finished, I ended up having some plastic surgery. And how did that go?

Not well. That's just not what you want to do when you're 25 or 26. And I regretted it immediately and have kind of sort of regretted it since. Even now? Way so now, because I've become a really public advocate to say to women, you're gorgeous, and you're perfect the way you are. So, oh yeah, it was not a good thing for me to do. That's when you started taking, you've been public about this. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pain killers. Well, they give them to you. I became very enamored with the warm bath of an opiate, you know, drank a little bit. never to excess, never any big public demonstrations. I was very quiet, very private about it. But it became a dependency for sure. Curtis says she's been sober for 26 years. Did you worry when you shared your story

of how you got sober that it would impact your career? I think I worried more that selling yogurt that makes you shit was going to, impact my career than for me to acknowledge that I had an addiction. I make the joke. It's a funny joke, but it's true. Take the Activia Challenge Now. It works or it's free. Ah, that yogurt commercial, famously parodied by Saturday Night Live. Now the good news, I just discovered...

Curtis, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, suddenly began selling pantyhose and hawking rental cars. Ferdt's came out on top. True Lies had made $400 million. You could have done anything you wanted to do. But you were taking those spokesperson jobs. Why? For the most part, because they allowed me to stay home with my kids.

So I am an imperfect, you know, working mom because no working moms are perfect. It's all scratch tape together. I'm looking at one. You're speaking to one. We make it look good. We think we've done it. But the truth is we feel bad, Lee. But I know how much time away from them I spent in pursuit of my own creativity.

Curtis has two children with Christopher Guest, the actor and director, best known for This Is Spinal Tap. It's famous for its sustain. I mean, you can just hold it. Well, I mean, so you don't have to put. And taking aim at dog shows. and even filmmaking in a series of documentaries. They've been married for more than 40 years. My mother was married four times.

My father was married five times. That's nine. My stepfather was married three. So I come from an immediate family of 12 marriages. So my joke, I'm still married to my first husband, you know, it was important to me that I stay married. to my husband, that he's my husband. Do you ever pass a role that you wish you had taken?

No. Once their kids were grown, Curtis traded in carpool duty for unapologetically driving her own career. We're going this way. She runs her own production company, which has a TV series in the work starring Nicole Kidman and a feature film about the catastrophic Paradise Wildfires in 2018.

She's also running her own charity. Curtis has raised over a million for Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, and donated another million to victims of the recent wildfires, which destroyed much of Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, including this home, where she filmed the millennial hit Freaky Friday and its sequel, Freakier Friday. And four decades after the first Halloween, she finally put that franchise to rest. But it is a string of raw, vulnerable characters. characters that came to Curtis in her 60s that led to a comeback even she never imagined.

You know, I mean, he's cute-ish. Playing the aging waitress and the last showgirl. I could also get you a job. Or sucking the oxygen out of the kitchen as the combustible matriarch, Donna Brazzado, in Hulu's TV series, The Bear. Donna, the images in my mind of her buttering the bread with the nails and the eyelash on the cheese. eyelash. That single eyelash, I think, won me an Emmy. I swear to God. Go, I'm good. Go. Go. I've waited my whole life for Donna.

Patiently, quietly cooking. My own creative, mental life, my own, you know, my own alcoholism. And it's just so beautifully written that you don't have to do anything. have to do anything. But it was 2022's mystical, somewhat mind-bending everything everywhere all at once that pushed Jamie Lee Curtis out of her comfort zone. Did you understand that role when you got it? Not one second of it. Did I understand that script? No. Nothing but a stack of receipts I can trace the ups and downs. Curtis says she did understand Deirdre Dirdre, the hard-boiled bureaucrat from hell. It does not look good.

We all know Deirdre. She's a woman who's not loved. She's a woman who uses her power in her job to control people because she has no love in her life. Curtis was unrecognizable, but her performance did not go unnoticed. Jamie Lee? Before the moment, though, first, when they call your name. Yes.

You say, I think, shut. Cut up. Totally. Because that wasn't supposed to happen. Your mom never won an Oscar. Dad never won an Oscar. No, they didn't. They were both nominated. Does this make you feel like you're on even footing with your parents who were these gigantic stars? I think about surpassing my parents, which I have emotionally. I've surpassed my parents with sobriety. My mother was restricted by what the industry wanted from her and expected from her and would allow from her.

My mother would have hated the last showgirl because I showed what I really looked like. And so I have, I don't want to say surpassed them, but I have freedom. The morning after her Oscar win, a photographer asked Curtis to recreate a photo of actress Faye Dunaway and her statue from nearly 50 years ago. She agreed with one condition. And I said to him, yeah, but I won't do it seriously. We have to make it funny. Jamie Lee Curtis hasn't just embraced imperfection.

She's made it in art. Revisiting Cinema History. She never took a shower again. At 60 Minutes Overtime.com Kate Winslet was just 20 years old when she was plucked from relative obscurity to star in Titanic. She's had her pick of lead roles ever since. Film critics we spoke to compare her to grades like Catherine Hepburn and Meryl Streep. Winslet has a propensity for playing tough, angst-ridden women.

That's exactly who she became in the film Lee, which she also predict. about American photographer Lee Miller, one of the few female journalists on the front lines of World War II. Cecilia Vega met Winslet back in 2024 at the theater where she performed as a teenager and found her to be remarkably un-Hollywood. She drove herself to the interview, showed up alone, and dropped a few F-bombs. Well, the idea of going back on this stage still terrifies me. So how do you get over the nerves? What do you tell yourself? Oh, honestly, it's a whole bunch of mind-fitting.

I mean, it is even to this day. Like anything, going for a job interview. It's absolutely terrifying if it's a job you really want, doubly terrifying. You've said on the first day you walk in and think, everyone is in here thinking, why did they cast her? Yeah, that, oh my God. You are an Oscar-winning actress.

So what? When I was doing Lee, I would sit there and I would say, this is ridiculous. I can truly think of at least five other brilliant actresses who would have played this part much better than me, like a lot better. And often I will turn to another crew member and I'll say, they just read the wrong name off the list.

I'm telling you, they didn't mean for me to be here. And I will have days... Merrill's coming out of the back door now to take your role. Welcome, come on in. Delighted to have you. You must be Lee Miller. Well, it's a war zone, colonel. Just Lee is fine.

That role that is... caused Kate Winslet so much angst was for the movie Lee. She didn't just star in it, she made it, her first as a producer. How much time did you spend at this house? Oh my God, I mean a lot of time across seven years, yeah. Those years were spent at Lee Miller's estate in the English countryside, where she lived with her husband, a British painter. It's where, with the help of Miller's son, Winslet scoured the archives and decided to focus. Miller's life story, not on her history as a model who had many lovers. We don't hire older models.

Don't blow a gasket. I'm not a model anymore. But as a troubled woman, who in her late 30s left her glamorous life to become a war photographer, capturing some of the most haunting images from World War II, including some of the first uses of napalm and Nazi concentration camps. Winslet says she knew it wouldn't be an easy cell. Tell me a little bit about what some of those phone calls were like. There was one potential investor who said to me, why should I like this woman? I mean, she's drunk.

She's, you know, she's like loud. She's like, I mean, he just probably stopped short of saying she has wrinkles on her face. You had a director say something like, I'll get your little Lee funded. You want to share names now? No, never, never know. That's not my vibe. No, no, but so this director did say, yeah, tell you what, If you be in my film, I'll help you get your little Lee Miller film made.

And he actually went like that. And I was like, might just have lost signal. She didn't make the movie with those men. Instead, she insisted on bringing in a female director, co-producer and writers. Winslet was intimately involved in every step of production, as we saw during a scoring session. Kate? Yeah.

It doesn't feel too loud to you. does it? Well, it's funny. Okay, it's too loud. Let's do it again. She also enlisted a historian to make an exact replica of Miller's camera and really took pictures while she was acting. Why did you feel like you had to learn this craft?

It couldn't just be a prop. It needed to feel like an extension of my arms. I had to be confident and comfortable with it. And in order to do that, I had to know what I was doing. She spends months, even years, prepared. in years preparing for roles, inventing an elaborate backstory for every character, down to what sport they played in school and how they feel about their mothers. You know me, I'm impulsive.

She's learned to dig for fossils, make dresses, and free dive, holding her breath for more than seven minutes for Avatar 2. And she's not afraid of being exposed. All right. Make me invisible. Because to see a Kate Winslet movie often means you'll see a lot of Kate Winslet. Let's see what happens. And then there's the accents.

Yeah, Mercian, down at East Town. She won an Emmy from Mayor of East Town, playing a vaping, beer-swigging detective, nailing the specific sound of Delaware County, a Philadelphia suburb. She's probably lying at the bottom of the Delaware River right now. And why is a Philly so hard? It's actually the eye sound in the Philadelphia and the Delco dialect that is really difficult. They don't say, that's nice. They say, that's nice.

I like your bike. And though she may seem like someone with a shelf full of Oscars, she won her first and only in 2009 for her portrayal of a Nazi prison guard in the reader. I want to take out a book. For years, she kept a statue in her bathroom, so guests could hold it. up in the mirror and pretend to win. I used to get the bus into town a lot. We went with Winslet to Reading,

the working class town just outside London where she was born and raised. This is the house? Oh my God, this is the house. The front door boarded up. Her family no longer lives here. I lived here until when I was sort of 16, and I kind of left home, really, when I was 16.

Winslet is the second of four children. Her father was a struggling actor, who often gave his daughter the advice she still lives by. You're only as good as your last gig. He would sort of hop from job to job, and then he would do, you know, part-time work to make ends me in the meantime. But the thing that was interesting, I think, is that even though there was so little, as you can see, to go around,

we were really happy. With financial help from a charity for actors, she enrolled in a local theatre school when she was 11, catching the train into London for auditions. She says the scrutiny of her appearance started young. You once had a drama teacher tell you settle for the fat girl parts? Oh, yeah. Now listen, Kate, I'm telling you, darling,

if you're going to look like this, you'll have to settle for the fat girl parts. And I was never even fat. What did that do to your spirit? Your confidence? It made me think, I'll just show you. Just quietly. It was like a sort of a quiet, uh, determination, really.

Yeah, I'll just go in. This grocery store was once the deli where 16-year-old Winslet was working when she got the news that she'd landed her first movie. And I was making a sandwich, and the phone rang, and I swear to God, there was something about the way the phone rang. I was like, oh my God, that's for me. I wonder if it's about the job. And then the owner was like, hey, phone for you.

I thought, oh, my God. So I ran and was told that I'd gotten this part. and then I was just so unraveled. I had to leave. I was like, I have to go home and tell Mom and Dad. After filming that first movie, Heavenly Creatures, Winslet went right back to making sandwiches. That must have been kind of what is going on in my world here.

No, because that was what I knew. You know, my dad would do jobs and he'd go back to, you know, tarmac in the roads or working as a postman. So I just thought, oh, well, that's what you do as an actor. You know, if you're lucky you get a job and then you go back to a day job. At 20, she got the offer for the part that would make Hollywood history. Playing Rose opposite Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack in Titanic, the first film to break a billion dollars at the box office.

Winslet was game to discuss just about anything. But... Let's talk about Titanic. Really? I was wondering what your reaction would be if I said that to you. No, I'm happy to talk about Titanic. I guess it wouldn't be anything. interview with you if we didn't talk about Titanic in some way.

It could be an interview without it. We tried to ask about the famous scene that has sparked decades of debates. I'll never let go. I promise. May I ask, True, Leo really could have fit on the raft? Do you know what? I have no idea. Does it annoy you at all that 27 years later this movie still comes up in this way and probably will for the rest of your life?

rest of your life? No. I tell you what I do sometimes find, um, just curious, I suppose, is whatever I say about Titanic will often be the take home. So I just think, oh, well, there were those things that I said about the film I was talking about. And yet that's the one thing. So, so that's the only thing that sometimes I just think, mm. What to miss? While Titanic made Winslet a star, she says it came at a cost. Paparazzi aggressively pursued her and just listened to how she was ridiculed for her weight.

It's a little melted and poured into that dress. And, you know, she just needed two sizes large and it would probably been okay. I gasped at how cruel some of that coverage was of you at that time. I know. It's absolutely appalling. What kind of a person must they be to do something like that

to a young actress who's just trying to figure it out. Did you ever get face to feast with any of those people? I did get face to face. What did you say? I let them have it. I said, I hope this haunts you. It was a great moment because it wasn't just for me.

It was for all those people who were subjected to that level of harassment. It was horrific. It was really bad. Now 49, Winslet says she developed an armor that she brings. to characters like Lee Miller. People say, oh, you were so brave for this role. You didn't wear any makeup. You had wrinkles.

Do we say to the men, oh, you were so brave for this role. You grew a beard? No, we don't. That still happened to you? Yes, it happens to me all the time. It's not brave. It's playing the part. Is it true that a crew member came up to you

and said you might want to kind of sit up a little bit? You're showing a lump. Yeah. You might want to kind of just sit in, suck in, sit up. And I was like, you didn't. I don't think Lee would have done. It's about knowing that Lee's her ease with her physical self was hard one. In Hollywood, you could have a lot of great lights so that you don't see the lump that we all have, the bumps that we all have.

You don't care about showing that. No, I don't. I don't. Why not? It's exhausting. When she's not filming, Winslet lives far from the spotlight in a quiet English seaside village. She and her husband, Ned Abel Smith, have a 10-year-old son, she also has a 20-year-old son and 24-year-old daughter from previous marriages. Winslet is not on social media and told us she doesn't read reviews of her work, but this much she knows.

It's hard to make films about historical female figures. You know, typically those aren't films that would necessarily do well in the box office. Says she's sitting here proudly telling you that her film has taken over 25 million so far. Chiching! And we made a film about one woman. So there's not a sense of, I told you so? No, I don't feel like that, but I just hope they've seen the film. I'm Anderson Cooper.

Thanks for joining us. We'll be back next week with an all-new edition of 60 Minutes. The Volkswagen Beetle started out as Hitler's dream card. It wound up as a beloved hippie icon and the best-selling car of all time. How did that happen? I'm Jacob Goldstein. And I'm Robert Smith. On business history, we tell the surprising stories behind the inventions and entrepreneurs that shaped our economy.

And the story of The Beetle is truly surprising. It has so much in it. He says, you should be able to mount machine guns on it. Sure. Not for the family vacation, but, you know, for other things. You never know. Other plans. Listen wherever you get your podcast.

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