Kate Winslet Told By Daughter, Son to 'Just Be Regular'

Kate Winslet‘s portrayal of Hanna Schmitz in The Reader was so convincing it garnered her an Academy Award nomination, and her devotion to the role was even apparent as she tucked in Mia Honey, 8, and Joe Alfie, 5, each night at bedtime. “They got mightily fed up with me reading bedtime stories with a German accent,” the 33-year-old actress tells The Sun. “They said, ‘Mum, just be plain. Don’t do any funny stuff like voices. Just be regular.'” Staying in character was important to Kate, however.

“I had to say, ‘But, I’m not regular and I’m never going to be regular. When you’re a teenager you’re going to know that it’s cool.'”

When Mia and Joe saw photographs of Kate as an aged Hanna, even they were fooled — asking if they were instead looking at photographs of their grandmother. When Kate revealed that it was, in fact, her under all the makeup the children replied that she looked “yucky.” “I took it as a compliment that they genuinely thought I looked old,” she explains. “Needless to say, I didn’t tell my mother.” While there was a time when Kate “used to try to hide [Mia and Joe] from being in the public eye,” that time has passed.

“Now I say to my daughter, ‘Do you know why people come up to us?’ She says, ‘Yes, because you do films and you are famous.'”

Mia is Kate’s daughter with ex-husband Jim Threapleton; Joe is her son with husband Sam Mendes.

The Reader is in theaters now.

Source: The Sun