Kate Winslet is the April cover girl for Glamour Magazine. Her cover appearance fulfills two things: she’s promoting her work in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, and Glamour readers named Kate the “Most Glamourous” woman for the third year in a row. Which makes me wonder… what are Glamour readers smoking? I like Kate, and she sometimes has a great red carpet moment, but she’s not really a glamour-puss, in my opinion. Anyway, the full Glamour interview is online here, and here are some of the highlights:

GLAMOUR: Here you are, playing a character who is described in James M. Cain’s novel as “fat and getting a little shapeless,” a woman who has “lost everything she had worked for.” For God’s sake, what’s the deal with your love of playing these angst-ridden women?
KATE WINSLET: [Laughs.] It’s my chance to challenge myself to the fullest, which is one of the great joys about this job…. I love it when a character requires me to look less than my red-carpet best. It’s more fun playing a character that requires you to look like dog s—t….I’ve never understood the notion that actors and actresses should look great on-screen just because they’re on-screen. That doesn’t make sense to me.

GLAMOUR: Which is ironic, because you have been voted Most Glamorous three years in a row by Glamour magazine’s readers.
KATE WINSLET: That is incredibly flattering, but it’s just so far from how I view myself. I mean, you are lucky my hair is even dry right now!

GLAMOUR: Do you have a personal trainer?
KATE WINSLET: [Continues laughing.] No. I just do my own stuff at home with the help of DVDs. A little bit of Pilates. And just recently I started running, but I’m not very good.

GLAMOUR: During your last interview for Glamour six years ago, you were asked what you were going to be like in five years. And you jokingly replied that you’d be doing liposuction and Botox. Have you changed your mind about not trying those cosmetic things?
KATE WINSLET: My face is still moving, right? No, I have never tried any of that stuff…. I don’t have parts of my body that I hate or would like to trade for somebody else’s or wish I could surgically adjust into some fantasy version of what they are.

GLAMOUR: I read that you were literally called “blubber” when you were a teenager because you were overweight.
KATE WINSLET: Yeah. Not when I was a teenager, actually—between the ages of 8 and 11. Looking back on it, I really wasn’t that heavy. I was just stockier than the other sporty, whippy-looking kids.

GLAMOUR: You stood 5’6” and weighed 200 pounds?
KATE WINSLET: When I was 15, yes.

GLAMOUR: Were you tormented? Because today you embrace your body in a way that women love—but did you feel that way back then?
KATE WINSLET: Well, that’s an enormous compliment. You know, I will tell you that when I was heavy, people would say to me—and it was such a backhanded comment—they would say, “You’ve got such a beautiful face,” in the way of, like, “Oh, isn’t it a shame that from the neck down you’re questionable.”

GLAMOUR: [Laughter.] When you won your Oscar for The Reader, did you do what so many people do after they win—did you wake up a couple of days later and say, “Now what?”
KATE WINSLET: No. No. No. I’m really, really proud to have won—to walk away with the biggest red ribbon on school sports day that you could be given. I was the kid who never won the races. I never jumped the highest. I wasn’t on the list of the high-achieving. That wasn’t me, so winning the Oscar was like winning all the prizes in one single night that I never won as a kid. For me, it was an internal-fist-pumping moment of yes.

GLAMOUR: Which brings us back to the puzzle of Mildred Pierce. Here comes the obligatory question: Were there difficult things in your life that you drew from to play Mildred?
KATE WINSLET: To answer the question I know you are trying to ask me—“Did I take on this role because of what was specifically going on in my own life at the time?”—the answer is no. When I committed to the role, those things were not going on in my life.

GLAMOUR: I will admit that in episode one, when your neighbor sarcastically describes single motherhood as “the great American institution,” I couldn’t help but wonder if the concept of marriage is now less enjoyable to you.
KATE WINSLET: I am a big believer in marriage.

GLAMOUR: Is the idea of getting married again still appealing?
KATE WINSLET: That’s a question I definitely can’t answer…but of course I believe in marriage. Commitment to one other person in life is glorious.

GLAMOUR: Let me ask you about your kids. What is the challenge of raising them as they become more and more conscious of your public life?
KATE WINSLET: The challenge is making sure that they’re never treated different just because I sometimes am. I always want them to be regular kids who are grateful and respectful of other human beings. I want them to know that when we fly first-class, that they are lucky. The highest compliment I could ever receive about my kids—and I can say that this does happen frequently—is when the in-flight crew say to me, “Your children are wonderful. They are so well-behaved.” Every time I am told that, I could weep.

GLAMOUR: Are you uncomfortable being a celebrity?
KATE WINSLET: It’s bizarre. I am a person. I am not a soap opera. There is never going to be a next [tabloid] installment about my life because my own stuff is my own stuff.

[From Glamour]

This is one of the better Kate Winslet interviews, especially in the past few years. Although, I will say this about Kate: she doesn’t do any press if she’s not promoting anything, which I always like. When she was promoting The Reader, there was Winslet overload, and after she won her Oscar, she went away and let people miss her, even when her marriage fell apart. Anyway, I get the feeling that this miniseries is going to be really good, and that Kate will b sweeping the awards season once again – this time for television.

Oh, and bitch is lying her ass off about the ‘Tox. The few times she’s been photographed over the past year, her face has looked JACKED.

Photos courtesy of Glamour.