Kate Winslet Lost the Oscar Five Times but Ignored Any Pressure to Finally Win: ‘It’s Not a Weight on the Shoulders at All’

Kate Winslet says losing several Oscars never added pressure to her career to deliver an award-worthy performance. Winslet was always a bridesmaids and never a bride at the Academy Awards for a large chunk of her career, earning five Oscar nominations over a decade and never winning the prize. She finally landed her best actress statue in 2009 for “The Reader,” but even then she wasn’t feeling the pressure.

During an interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, host Josh Horowitz asked if Winslet ever felt pressure to win the Oscar after missing out for so long. As Winslet said: “Nominated a few times, never won.:

“No, it’s not a weight on the shoulders at all,” Winslet answered. “I still today can’t believe I get to do this job and have this career and met some extraordinary people and still continue to learn.”

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Winslet stressed that the real career pressure she feels is to keep growing, which is why producing her latest project, “Lee,” was so rewarding.

“Shit, I am actually producing,” she said. “I am funding stuff and keeping things going. I was totally making it up, but that’s also producing. It’s about people, pulling people together and taking them with you.”

Winslet was first nominated for an Oscar in 1996 thanks to her supporting role in “Sense and Sensibility.” Four more nominations followed over the next decade for “Titanic,” “Iris,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Little Children.” Since winning the Oscar in 2009, Winslet has been nominated once for “Steve Jobs.”

The actor once told WSJ Magazine that she keeps her best actress Oscar statue in her bathroom, explaining: “The whole point is for everybody to pick it up and go, ‘I’d like to thank my son and my dad’—and you can always tell when someone has, because they’re in there a little bit longer after they flushed. They’ll come out looking slightly pink-cheeked. It’s hysterical.”

In a Variety cover story earlier this year, Winslet remembered why “The Reader” stood out in her career. She credited director Stephen Daldry’s approach to collaboration on set for fueling her Oscar-winning work.

“It was the first time I had worked with a director who could be openly nervous and vulnerable,” Winslet said. “Stephen Daldry would say, ‘Why are you looking at me? I haven’t got a fucking clue how you’re going to play it either. We’ll do it together.’”

Watch Winslet’s full interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast in the video below.