60 Minutes - 06/22/2025: Navalny, Our Mistake is Your Responsibility, Kate Winslet

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Months after anti-Putin activist Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison, his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, now the leading figure of his political movement, spoke with correspondent Lesley Stahl in Navalnaya’s first U.S. interview about her late husband’s posthumous memoir. Navalnaya discussed the book – Navalny’s last act of defiance against the Kremlin, which chronicles his final three years behind bars under often brutal conditions – and his death, which she blames on Russian president Vladimir Putin. She details Alexei’s clandestine operation for penning the memoir inside a high-security prison and then smuggling it out; why the couple decided to return to Russia after Navalny was poisoned; and her daring campaign for justice in the wake of his death. Each year, about 2 million Americans receive a bill from the Social Security Administration, saying they were paid too much in benefits and must pay it back. Even if the error is not their fault, they often still have to pay. Correspondent Anderson Cooper reports on how some elderly and disabled people have been burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Correspondent Cecilia Vega travels to the U.K. for an intimate portrait of actor Kate Winslet, Hollywood’s most non-Hollywood A-lister, and discusses her transformative journey to starring in and producing her film, “Lee.” Winslet, who has been a vocal advocate against the insults and inequalities facing women in the film industry, relies on this experience for the role, portraying American photographer Lee Miller, who worked for Vogue as one of the few female war correspondents on the frontline of WWII. As Vega discovers, Winslet and Miller share a resilience and see the world through a similar lens, making her connection more than just a role. 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

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When people go missing, I get hired to help find them. When lives are on the line... Coulter, please find my daughter. He's the man for the job. I'm gonna do everything I can. Don't miss a moment... Coulter's in trouble. I can feel it. ...of TV's number one show...

These people are dangerous. I'm doing this alone. Not at all. Every Batman gotta have their router. Coulter! in trouble. I can feel it. Of TV's number one show. These people are dangerous. I'm doing this alone. Not at all. Every Batman gotta have their Robin. Coulter! Justin Hartley stars. I made a promise. I will never stop looking. In Tracker. All episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning CBS Fall. We have reported on Alexei Navalny since 2017. The fearless opposition leader to Vladimir Putin was beaten, poisoned, and then last year at age 47, he died in a Russian penal colony. His secret prison diaries were published last October

as a memoir, and his widow, Yulia, talks about how she's now leading the fight against Putin. It's a dangerous place to be. I don't care at all. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, like Stephen and Becky Sword, receive a letter from the Social Security Administration saying that due to a government miscalculation, they owe Social Security money. In their case, a lot of money, $51,887. The Swords were asked to repay it within 30 days.

Are you scared? He's thinking we're going to lose our house, you know, what are we going to do? I mean, we're very scared. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. 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. Great, thank you. She's probably lying at the bottom of the Delaware River right now. And why is a Philly so hard? It's actually the I 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. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonzi. I'm Scott Pelley.

I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories in a moment, but we begin with Iran. Last night, a fleet of American warplanes flew halfway around the world and dropped more than a dozen 30,000-pound bombs on Iran's main nuclear

facilities. President Trump watched from the Situation Room. It was the first time the ultra-heavy Bunker Buster bombs have been used in combat. Satellite imagery of the aftermath showed large craters and destroyed buildings. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Cain, said it's too early to say if Iran's nuclear capabilities have been fully destroyed. Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained

extremely severe damage and destruction. With this strike, the U.S. has waded into Israel's war with Iran. President Trump has threatened more attacks if Iran doesn't give up its nuclear program. Tonight, Iran shows no signs of backing down. It fired more missiles into Israel today, and Israel responded with attacks of its own. The U.S. military is braced for any possible retaliation. Iran has long vowed to strike American bases in the Middle East or ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane,

triggering fears of a wider war and heightened threat environment here in the U.S. Culture's in trouble. I can feel it. Of TV's number one show. These people are dangerous. I'm doing this alone. Not at all. Every Batman gotta have their router. Culture! Justin Hartley stars. I made a promise. I would never stop looking. In Tracker, all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning CBS Fall. The death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison in the Arctic last year sparked an outcry around the world.

He was compared to Nelson Mandela as a prisoner of conscience. While behind bars, he completed a memoir documenting, as we reported last October, his three-year battle to survive the unspeakable prison conditions. This was our third story on Navalny. The first was in 2017, when he stood up to Vladimir Putin by running against him for president of Russia. When he was arrested in 2021, Navalny's popularity

as the most prominent leader of the Putin opposition was growing. Putin is a thief and the head of the entire corrupt system. He was defiant, brave for taking on the all-powerful Vladimir Putin out in the open, denouncing him as a gangster. He refused to back down and paid the ultimate price. Three years in Russian prisons, and then last February, death at age 47. His wife, Yulia, once her husband's silent partner, is now the leader of his opposition movement.

She says Alexei's memoir, Patriot, represents his final act of defiance. It was his life. It was his every-minute job to fight with Putin's regime. And now he's fighting from the grave. I would prefer he would fight not from the grave. And of course it's very tough for me to say like this, but we can say so. Last summer, a Russian court issued an arrest warrant for her. It's a dangerous place to be.

I don't care at all. You're not afraid? No, not really. Why should I be afraid? They could kidnap you. They could try to poison you. They could, but I don't want to live my life and to spend my life every day thinking about

if they kidnap me today or tomorrow, if they are going to poison me today or tomorrow. I'm not thinking about poisoning. You know who you sound like? You sound like Alexei. He would say the same thing. Of course, I've been living with him more than 25 years. In that time, Alexei, trained as a lawyer, became Russia's most famous anti-corruption activist and investigator, posting his findings online about bribes and kickbacks, and evidence of the wealth Putin and his cronies had,

as Navalny said, stolen from the Russian people. And you're goading them. These are people who are trying to steal my country, and I strongly disagree with it. I'm not going to be a kind of speechless person right now. I'm not going to keep silent. He called Putin a madman who was sucking the blood out of Russia, and more insults, as he built a pro-democracy movement opening offices all across Russia. It was a time when other Putin opponents were dying in suspicious suicides, a car bombing. Dissident Boris Nemtsov was shot out in the open near the Kremlin, and Navalny himself

was subjected to multiple arrests and beatings, an attack with green dye laced with a caustic chemical, and in 2020, an assassination attempt that he recounts in the beginning of his book. He writes that shortly before he boarded a plane in Siberia, he was poisoned with a Soviet-era military-grade nerve agent. He collapsed, moaning in agony, as his body began to shut down. While he was in a coma at a Russian hospital, Yulia waged a campaign to pressure Putin to release Alexei so he could fly to Germany for treatment. We met them in Berlin about two months after the attack. You have said you think that Mr. Putin's responsible. I don't think I'm sure that he's responsible.

He spent five months recovering in Germany. That's when he started writing the memoir. Then, in January of 2021, the Navalnis returned to Russia. When they landed, they were met by Russian police. He was arrested, said goodbye to his wife, and was led away. This is a question you're going to be asked over and over and over. But it's almost the essential question. Why did you decide to go back, the two of you?

You knew the danger, for sure. And do you regret it now? You asked me about our decision, like we were sitting together and discussing if he needs to go back or he doesn't need to go back. It didn't work like this. From the first day when I realized that he could recover after this poisoning. I knew that he would go back as soon as possible. So it wasn't even a debate? No. When do we go back as opposed to if? We didn't have any debates and of course I would love to live all my life with my husband, but at that moment I knew that there is just one decision which he could take.

And it was his decision. And I knew how important it was for him. And I knew that he wouldn't be happy to live in exile. His arrest sparked protests across Russia. But far from disappearing in prison, Navalny managed to maintain a presence on social media. How, we were asked not to say. But it enabled him to keep up his attacks on Putin. Meanwhile, his team of investigators released drone footage of what they said was Putin's

billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea. It was viewed more than a hundred million times on YouTube. It must have driven Putin insane. He locked him up, and he's still getting the anti-Putin message out. That's why his conditions were worse from month to month. Those conditions Navalny wrote in his diaries included sleep deprivation, punitive solitary confinement, almost no medical care. And when none of that broke him, he was sent repeatedly to a concrete black hole called the punishment cell, where

he would remain for up to 15 days at a time. Here's how he described it. He said it was a dog house. And this is the place where prisoners were sent to be tortured and raped and sometimes murdered. I wondered how you read those passages. I was thinking of you when I read it and thought, what is she feeling? How are you reading this? It's a very tough moment for him to think about all these torturing places and torturing

conditions and about him, how he was laughing at these people even while he was there. Nivalny thought of his life in prison as his work, surviving and staying positive his job. I know one thing for sure, he wrote, that I'm among the happiest 1% of people on the planet, those who absolutely adore their work. I have enormous support from the people, and I met a woman with whom I share not only love, but who is just as opposed as I am to what is going on. Maybe we won't succeed, but we have to try.

He wrote much of this book while he was in prison. He was under constant surveillance, cameras on him all the time, and he managed to get the pages out. Alexei was very smart, very inventive. Let me read you what he says in the book about this. He says, I had to devise a whole clandestine operation to bamboozle the guards involving the substitution of identical notebooks. And after that, we went to court where I was

able physically to pass items to someone. It was very difficult. That's why we have diaries from the first year, much less from the second year, and not from the third year, because it wasn't possible. These are some of the diaries he smuggled out when he went to court, which was often as he was tried and convicted several times on various pretexts. After each verdict, he was moved to a different prison

with harsher conditions. In December, 2023, he was transferred to this penal colony north of the Arctic Circle. This would be his final court appearance. He looked healthy and in good spirits, sharing a laugh with court officials. The very next day, February 16, 2024, he was dead. Russian officials announced later

that the cause was, quote, not criminal in nature and due to combined diseases. It was at the time that the negotiations over a prisoner swap were underway, and Alexei might be one of the prisoners who was to be released. Putin realized that Alexei is so big that he could be a new leader of Russia. He could encourage people to stand against Putin and all these things just brought Putin to this understanding that it's not possible to let Navalny be free.

You posted a message shortly after his death. You said, bravely, I thought, Vladimir Putin killed my husband. By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart, and half of my soul. That's true. I can say now the same. Nothing has changed. Here's something else you said. You posted this on X. Please do not forget, Vladimir Putin is a murderer and a war criminal. His place is in prison and not somewhere in the

Hague in a cozy cell with a TV, but in Russia in the same two by 3 meter cell in which he killed Alexei. For me, it's very important. I think that for Vladimir Putin, he needs to be in Russian prison to feel everything. What not just my husband, but all the prisoners in Russia. His political network inside Russia has been crushed. Yulia and their two children have been forced to live in exile. Many of his old team now operate out of here in Vilnius, Lithuania, and three of his lawyers in Russia have been sent to prison.

And Yulia is constantly on the road, lobbying Western leaders to stand up to Putin. So the question is inevitable, painful, but inevitable. Has Putin won? Has he shut down the opposition to such an extent that it's over? But it's not finished. We continue our fight.

He still has millions of supporters. We can see by how many people go still every day to his grave. How many flowers on his grave. I believe. ones with guests will now be on video. Every Thursday you'll hear us and see us chatting with big name celebrities. And every Monday you're stuck with just me and Dana. We react to news, what's trending, viral clips. Follow and listen to Fly on the Wall everywhere you get your podcasts.

Each month about 74 million Americans, retirees, disabled workers, and others receive payments from Social Security. But each year, many people get something else in the mail, a bill. They're told they owe the government money, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, because the Social Security Administration miscalculated their benefits and paid them too much. When we first reported this story in 2023,

the agency said about a million people a year are affected by this problem, but it now acknowledges that when you consider all the agency's programs, it's two million people per year. It can happen to anyone, and it can take years, even decades, for these unexpected debts to suddenly come to light. It often doesn't matter if it's not the recipient's fault, they still have to pay. Few people realize it, but Social Security's mistakes are your responsibility.

In 2022, at Steven and Becky Sword's home in Chicago, a letter arrived from the Social Security Administration. When Becky Sword read it, she was stunned to discover that she and her husband owed Social Security $51,887 and were expected to repay it within 30 days. That letter changed your life. Oh, yeah. Are you scared?

He's thinking we're going to lose our house, you know, what are we going to do? I mean, we're very scared. When we spoke with Steven and Becky Sword in 2023, Steven was making $16 an hour as a security guard on the overnight shift at a condominium complex. Becky was working days as an occupational therapy assistant in a nursing home. They were 62 years old and had worked full time most of their lives.

But for several years, Steven had been dealing with the effects of a pancreatic disease that nearly killed him in 2016. How long were you in the hospital for? About 105 days. It was hard because when I left the hospital, it took me about two months to learn to eat and walk again. Stephen started receiving Social Security disability checks in 2017 as he recovered

and returned to work. The agency's rules are complicated, but Becky faxed Stevens' pay stubs to Social Security so the agency could monitor his earnings and eligibility. She kept the fax receipts. So I knew they were getting it, you know. In return, Social Security sent the swords letters like this one, saying it had increased Stevens' benefits to give him credit for his 2019 earnings. sent the swords letters like this one, saying it had increased Stephen's benefits to give him credit for his 2019 earnings.

Is the impression you got from that that they're examining the pay stubs and they're paying attention and adjusting accordingly? Because they're increasing it, yeah. But the letter the swords got from Social Security in 2022 said Stephen shouldn't have gotten any money at the time the agency gave him that increase. Stephen and Becky owed more than $50,000, the agency said, because we did not stop his

checks about three years sooner. Has anyone in Social Security ever sort of apologized? No. They take no blame at all. They say it's our fault. They're saying you should have known that… That I'm making too much money. That Social Security was giving you too much money. Yeah. Even though Social Security didn't know that they were're making too much money. That Social Security was giving you too much money.

Yeah. Even though Social Security didn't know that they were giving you too much money. Yeah. Which is strange because you're sending in all your pay stuff. Someone has to file that. And when we asked them, they said, well, they're not looking at that every month. And then she even said, well, they're not even looking at it every year. I would think yearly at least they would review it.

I could see making a mistake after a few months, but not three years of a mistake. And then they blamed it on COVID. They blamed it on being understaffed. And so to me right there, it's saying it's their fault. The Social Security Administration told us its privacy rules prevented from commenting on individual cases like the swords. No one from the agency would give us an on-camera interview. Nobody knows this is happening to so many people. This is not a story

Social Security wants to publicize. Oh no. Terry Savage writes a nationally syndicated column on personal finance. Lawrence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University, created software to help people maximize their Social Security benefits. Together they've been trying to draw attention to what they call Social Security horror stories, caused largely, they say, by the Social Security Administration's own mistakes. Their mantra, their rule is, our mistake is your mistake. And you can appeal it or ask for a waiver. The only reason that it will

waive this call back is if you are indigent, really really poor. The worst part of it is they have all the power because they say if you don't pay us back we're just going to cut your benefit check. Imagine people live on those checks and all of a sudden you get no check or a small amount. If someone's been paid too much in Social Security benefits, why shouldn't they have to pay it back? Because you relied on it. So you may have decided to retire early or to spend the money

on your child's tuition. Overpayments have existed for decades and caused people a lot of financial pain, but fixing the problem has never been a high priority on Capitol Hill. In 2015, Congress did approve a measure to reduce overpayments by giving Social Security more timely access to payroll data, but eight years later the agency still hasn't put the new system in place. Aging technology and staff shortages have taken a toll on Social Security. In 2022, the agency's workforce hit a 25-year low as the number of people claiming benefits kept going up.

When we took a close look at Social Security's annual reports to Congress, we discovered something else has been going up as well. The amount of money the agency has been clawing back from the checks of people with overpayments. Jean Rodriguez, then 73 years old, told us her retirement checks had been withheld for the past two years.

A former school cafeteria worker, she started receiving benefits in 2014. But four years later, she and her husband, Glenn, were asked to come to the local social security office in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to speak with a representative. And he says, we have a small problem. How much did he say they had overpaid you?

$72,000. That doesn't sound like a small problem. No. It wasn't. We were both devastated. What did they tell you happened? Somewhere along the line, they made a combination of four other people in addition to my numbers.

So they were giving you benefits based not just on your salary, but on four other people's salary, all combined. How does that happen? Good question. Don't know how they did it. Did Social Security admit to you that this was their fault? Yes they did. But the agency said the Rodriguez's had to pay the money back anyway

because they could afford to do so. Gene and Glenn own their home, and Glenn gets a pension from the Navy. If it was something I knew I did totally wrong, they had the right to come after me, but I didn't know how they calculated it. And then they waited four years to figure it out. In a statement, the Social Security Administration told us our payment accuracy rates are high, yet even small error rates add up to substantial improper payment amounts. The agency said it's required by law to recover this money and added that overpayments are

not necessarily the agency's fault. They can happen when a beneficiary does not timely report work or other financial information. There's no statute of limitations on how long Social Security can wait to collect an overpayment. Nearly four years ago, Roy Farmer of Livonia, Michigan, got a letter from Social Security asking whether he'd forgotten to pay a debt he didn't know he had. This is an alleged overpayment from 20 years ago? Yes, sir.

When you were 11 or 12 years old? Correct. Roy Farmer grew up in rural Cadillac, Michigan, in a family of six that struggled to make ends meet. We ended up near homelessness a couple of times, at one point even living, you know, six of us in a camper trailer. He was born with cerebral palsy. I had leg braces, I had to walk with a child-sized version of like an old person walker.

And you had surgeries, you had doctor's visits, you had it treated. Yeah, and so thankfully they were able to get me to a point where I can live a more or less normal life with some limitations. He's 34 years old now and works full-time, but when he was a child, his mother received benefits on his behalf. Social Security told him that when he was 11 years old, the agency determined he was no longer medically eligible for benefits and his mother received $4,902 too much. His mother died a few years ago and the agency is insisting he pay back the money because

it believes he can afford to do so. Could you afford $4,902? No, sir. he can afford to do so. Could you afford $4,902? No, sir. That much is about a sixth of my annual take-home pay. Like most of the people we spoke to, Roy Farmer couldn't find a lawyer to help him. There's little financial incentive for attorneys to take on these cases. It took Farmer nine months to get the document in his Social Security file. He was looking for the agency's evidence that he was no longer medically eligible for benefits

when he was 11 years old. But he says there was none. And they told me, we probably had it at some point, but we don't have it now. And they admit there's no evidence you're at fault, but they're still coming after you for it. Yes, sir. People at Social Security have told us, look, this is a law. there's no evidence you're at fault, but they're still coming after you for it. Yes, sir. People at Social Security have told us, look, this is a law,

this has to be changed through Congress, our hands are tied. It's not, Anderson, because the law says that if equity and good conscience demands that the clawback be waived, it should be waived. Lawrence Kotlikoff, the economist who's written about overpayments, is talking about a specific part of the Social Security Act that says the agency should not recover an overpayment if doing so would be against equity and good conscience. The problem, he says, is that Social Security interprets that phrase in a very narrow way.

So the agency itself, Social Security Administration, has a lot of discretion. Absolutely, yes. Oh, sure they do. But financially, the long-term picture is not good, and they've trained the staff. Look, your job is to collect every penny you can, no matter what. The Social Security Trust Fund for Retirement

and Disability Benefits is expected to be depleted around 2035, because the benefits being paid out are greater than the payroll taxes coming in. But Kotlikoff and Savage argue that clawing back money from the elderly and disabled isn't going to make much of a dent in that problem. They say there are some simple things Congress and the Social Security Administration could do to alleviate the stress and financial difficulty caused by overpayments. For example... Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations so that after 18 months it's

their mistake and they have to deal with it, not the person who mistakenly received and lived on that benefit check? If it's more than a year or two... Just waive it. To say our mistake, you're fine. Roy Farmer in Michigan had been waiting four months to appeal his case before an administrative law judge who works for Social Security. Gene and Glenn Rodriguez told us they'd been waiting four years. As for the swords in Chicago, Stephen and Becky told us they were tired of fighting the government

and had decided not to appeal the matter any further. I just figured we're going to have to give up our retirement funds. That's the only way you could do this? That's the only way, yeah. Because they said we'd have to pay it back in three years' time, and we'd have to come up with $1,400 a month to pay back. And we don't have that. We don't have that kind of money. When Steven Sword was not working the night shift

and Becky Sword was not working the day shift, they were preparing to hand over most of the $60,000 they'd saved for their retirement to the government agency charged with supporting Americans in their old age. After we asked the Social Security Administration about their cases back in 2023, all of the people in our story received phone calls

from the agency saying they would not have to pay the money back after all. Last year, Social Security announced it would claw back no more than 10% of a person's monthly check to recover an overpayment. But that policy changed this year under the Trump administration. Social Security now withholds 50% of monthly checks for most new overpayments it finds. 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 greats like Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep. Winslet has a propensity for playing tough, angst-ridden women, and that's exactly who she becomes in her latest film, Lee, which she also produced about American photographer Lee Miller, one of the few female journalists on the front lines of World War II. As we first told you in December, we met Winslet 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-f*****. I mean, it is even to this day. It's like anything, going for a job interview. It's absolutely terrifying if it's a job you really want. a whole bunch of mind-f*****. 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 where... Meryl's coming out of the back door now to take your role. Please.

Welcome. Come on in. Delighted to have you. You must be Lee Miller. It's a war zone, Colonel. Just Lee is fine. That role that 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. [♪techno music playing in background with heavy breathing and heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with heavy breathing in background with 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, but as a troubled woman who in her late thirties 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 sell. 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 you 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, no. 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? 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, 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. Here we go. 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, Mayor Sheehan, down at Easttown. She won an Emmy for Mayor of Easttown, playing a vaping, beer-swinging 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 it Philly so hard?

It's actually the I sound in the Philadelphia, in the Delco dialect that is really difficult. They don't say, that's nice. They 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 the 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 meet 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 ever 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 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 this the phone rang and I swear to god there was something about the way the phone rang. You knew? 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 and uh 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 my 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. Oh, no, because that was what I knew. You know, my dad would do jobs, and he'd go back to, you know, tar-macking the roads or working as a postman or... 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 an interview with you if we didn't talk about Titanic in some guess it wouldn't be an 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?

No, I tell you what I do sometimes find just curious I suppose is whatever I say about Titanic will often be the take-homes where 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 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. There's cakes a little melted and poured into that dress. And you know, she just needed two sizes large and it would probably have 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-face 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. 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 know, 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 happens 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 ease with her physical self was hard won. 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 know, I'm done. 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, sitting here proudly telling you that her film has taken over 25 million so far. 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 Cecilia Vega. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.

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