Ahead of Her Class

No Oscar Yet, but Kate Winslet's Career Is the One to Watch

NEW YORK

In the Hollywood-as-high-school fantasy of our minds, Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson giggle in the back of RomCom 101; Anne Hathaway rocks an independent study with Julia Roberts; Charlize and Nicole breeze in and out of "Prosthetics and Your Oscar."

And somewhere tucked away -- In an annex? Behind the boiler room? -- is a permission-only course team-taught by Judi Dench, Helen Mirren and Vanessa Redgrave, with occasional guest lectures by Maggie Smith. The class is called "Dame Training: How to Join the Greats." And because Cate Blanchett and a few other pupils are absent today, the only student -- taking furious notes and rapid-firing questions -- is Kate Winslet.

Kate Winslet? Lovely. Lovely in "Sense and Sensibility," lovely even when speaking vulgarities with that British accent of hers. Lovely in her fleshiness, which has nothing to do with the curves everyone's always talking about and everything to do with how real she is, and the fact that when she cries on screen she looks genuinely awful. She sinks into her roles like they are Barcaloungers. She commits.

She has no Academy Awards, though she's been up for five. At 22 (Remember "Titanic"?) she was the youngest person ever to have been nominated twice, then at 26 ("Iris") the youngest for three, then at 29 ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") the youngest for four, then at 31 ("Little Children") . . .

Next are two more Oscar-bait roles, in "The Reader," opening here tomorrow, and in "Revolutionary Road" a week later.

Question: How many more non-wins would it take before Kate, 33, pulled a Carrie and went telekinetic on the Kodak Theatre?

"Never," she says in that throaty, expressive voice. "I'm too dignified. I'm too dignified."

Ahem. She may not see it ("HA HA HA HA HA," she explodes when the dame thing is suggested), but after a decade of being the Not-It girl, eschewing "hot" for "interesting," one gets the sense that she's going to be one icon of a woman.

About Schmitz

"I didn't try to make her sympathetic. I knew that would be a mistake -- I knew it would be wrong to demand the sympathy of an audience. I'm playing a woman who is an SS guard. We're not supposed to sympathize with SS guards. . . . But I knew that I had to understand her. I had to really understand her, to come to her in very profound and complicated ways and develop my own relationship with her."

A Park Avenue hotel suite. Winslet has a place downtown with director-husband Sam Mendes, but she's been up here all day for interviews, and it's the end of a very long afternoon. Her feet are bare, the rest of her is va-va-voom in a sleeveless black dress. Hair: blond and Vargas Girl-y. Skin: creamy enough to be spread on something. Feet: hugely swollen. Topic: "The Reader."

Rabid Kate fans (who feel she empowers them, if they are women; who want to sleep with her, if they are men) may remember a 2005 guest role on "Extras." Winslet played a nasty version of herself, revealing that she'd accepted a role as a World War II nun solely for the award potential. Otherwise, "I don't think we need another film about the Holocaust, do we? . . . It was grim. We get it."