Kate Winslet hopes playing Lee Miller stays with her forever.
The 49-year-old actress – who has Mia, 24, and Joe, 20, from previous marriages and 10-year-old Bear with husband Edward Abel Smith – stars as the war photographer in new movie ‘Lee’ and she found the former Vogue cover model a “hugely inspiring” figure.
She told Britain’s HELLO! Magazine: “There are things about her that are in me and I hope will always be in me now, because she was so inspiring, with her ability to live life with resilience, compassion and power, redefining femininity 80 years ago.
“That’s how I will always want to live my life.
“That’s how I am with my friend and that’s how we’re raising our daughters – to have your eyes wide open and not judge people and always have kindness.”
Kate was keen to make a film about Lee – who died in 1977 aged 70 – that “lifted her out of the male gaze” because she felt frustrated about the ways in which the photographer had been discussed in the past.
She explained: “I wanted to make a film that lifted Lee out of the male gaze, because, when I first researched her in 2015, she was described as the ex-lover and muse of Man Ray and a former Vogue cover girl – belittling, infantilising labels that had been stuck on her.
“It just wasn’t ok with me because that was a little moment in her 20s and she didn’t even like being a model, she was already taking photographs.”
The Oscar-winning star believes Lee was driven by being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
She said: “Lee as so comfortable in her own skin. Given that she had experienced such trauma as a child, she could have hated men but somehow she didn’t. She would not let that define her.
“She lived life at full throttle and paid the price, because the PTSD hurt her for the rest of her life, until she reinvented herself as a cordon bleu chef in her 60s. She had many lives.”
