Winslet: Why I won’t let divorce harm my kids

After more than a year of silence on the subject, Kate Winslet has spoken of her torment following her break-up from director Sam Mendes.

The actress, who is 36 tomorrow, said divorce proceedings began while she was filming her Emmy award-winning role as Mildred Pierce - who also parts from her husband.

And she admitted that, at one point, her personal anguish mirrored the plot so much she did not have to act.

“There’s a scene where Mildred and Bert are divorced and they sit down together, because they’ve got to settle on a cause,” she said. “The first stage of my divorce with Sam came through on the very day that we were shooting. So that scene is nothing to do with acting.”

Mother-of-two Miss Winslet - now dating Sir Richard Branson’s nephew Ned Rocknroll - has recently appeared in a succession of revealing outfits. She split up with Mendes in March 2010.

“One thing I will say about me and Sam is that it’s fine, it’s really fine,” she said. “We’re grown-ups at the end of the day, and however hard it’s been for me, it’s been equally hard for him.”

In an expletive-laden interview with Harper’s Bazaar magazine, she said her initial reaction following the break-up was to bottle up her feelings - before a close friend encouraged her to show her emotions.

“As a woman, especially when you have children, one gets so good at soldiering on - almost too good. Because you know what it’s like - as soon as you open that can of worms, it’s so f***ing big, you wish you’d never taken the goddamn lid off.

“I’ve had to remind myself to have those moments of being able to have a f***ing good cry, but it did take someone putting their hand on me - a gay male friend, actually, who put his hand on my shoulder and said: “It’s OK, you can cry about this, and maybe you should.”

Miss Winslet has a daughter, Mia, who turns 12 next week, with first husband Jim Threapleton and a seven-year-old son, Joe, with Mendes. “There’s no way that I’m going to allow my children to be f***ed up because my marriages haven’t worked out,” she said.

“I so wish that that wasn’t the case, that that hadn’t happened in my life, but it has. So I will make the best of it.”

Miss Winslet and 33-year-old Mr Rocknroll, born Ned Abel Smith, are said to have got together in August following the house fire on Branson’s private Caribbean island of Necker, where they were both guests.

According to one friend, Miss Winslet is “madly in love” with Mr Rocknroll - who separated from his wife Eliza, 23, this year - and apparently believes he is “The One”.

One source reportedly said: “They have really fallen for each other. They are even mentioning marriage.”

Berkshire-born Miss Winslet has relocated from New York to England and enrolled her children in school. She told the magazine: “I feel that I’m just at the beginning of a new narrative, and it’s incredibly exciting.” - Daily Mail