After nearly a decade of trying to tell the story of war correspondent Lee Miller, Kate Winslet’s passion project, Lee, finally hits theaters on September 27.
“I’m getting better at not taking ‘no’ for an answer,” the Oscar winner tells Yahoo Entertainment.
Winslet’s nine-year journey was not without its bumps, as she recalls an illuminating meeting with an unnamed male investor.
“I’ve met a lot of different potential investors over the years, and I once had a coffee meeting with a male investor. He sat me down and said, ‘Why should I like this woman?’ And I thought, ‘Ah, okay. I take that as a no,” she says.
“It was great because it motivated me so much more to distance myself from that person, knowing that there was no way I was going to make a movie with him because he didn’t understand what I was trying to do. He did.” I don’t understand who Lee was,” Winslet continued. “And that for me was like… ‘that’s why I have to make this movie, because people like you say these stupid things.’ So stupid. So stupid.”
Lee portrays a decade in the life of the American war correspondent and photographer from World War II. Winslet was fascinated by Miller’s story because “she was somehow part of the history that was not only not specifically talked about, but not even talked about in an accurate or even appropriate way.”
“She was so looked at by the male gaze, [and] described as the former muse, ex-lover of [artist] Man Ray, former Vogue cover girl. These labels we put on women are never put on men, and yet, who Lee Miller really was was a war correspondent who went to the front lines when women weren’t allowed to go. And who fought for every space she could find herself in, documenting the atrocities of the Nazi regime for the female readers of British Vogue,” Winslet explains. “That’s a story I want to see, and that’s a story I want to tell.”
Winslet and her production partner Kate Solomon were so driven to create Leethe actress says it was difficult to calm down. When asked if she watches Bravo or some other form of counter-programming to unplug after a long day on set, she quickly said no.
“I’m not very good at relaxing,” she says. ‘And further LeeI just couldn’t do it, there wasn’t time,” she says. ‘I would go home, [Kate and I] would be like, okay, take a quick shower, and then maybe we’d sit down and have a glass of red wine. But we had constant work to do.”
Winslet admits, “I’m not very good at turning it off and I don’t really mind. It’s okay. I turn it off when I go to sleep. That’s it. The rest is just being immersed in the work. And that is exactly how I like to do it.”
Lee is in theaters now.
