Kate Winslet, 31, lives in downtown Manhattan on a tree-lined street near the Hudson River with her husband, director
Sam Mendes, 41, daughter Mia, 6 (with ex
James Threapleton), and son Joe, 2. But when the actress was 15, she met her first love, 28-year-old television writer Stephen Tredre. “He was the most important person in my life, next to my family,” says Winslet.
Shortly before Winslet began filming
Sense and Sensibility in 1994, Stephen was diagnosed with
bone cancer. “There was no point to his suffering. No rhyme or reason to it,” she says. “He lived healthfully. It always seemed impossible that this man could ever die.”
Tredre died of bone cancer in 1997, week
Titanic opened (Winslet missed the film’s Los Angeles premiere to attend his funeral). The couple had broken up the year before. “After we separated, he got ill again,” she says. “Stephen and I talked every day. This was not somebody I’d turn my back on.”
In the new issue of
Parade magazine, Winslet talks about losing her first love and finding love again with Mendes.
On Tredre’s death:
“Looking back, I see what I was dealing with when Titanic came out. I had a lot of pain and I was confused about who I was….I didn’t know how to deal with it. I sensed that great life changes were impending. I had to hang on by the seat of my
pants and not get drawn into public events and endless red carpets.”
On her guilt over breaking up with Tredre:
“I was so young, when I look back on it. Only 19. How could I have left a person who was so unwell? I thought Stephen was going to be all right….It was unbelievably heartbreaking. All I have left is that we remained very close until the end.”
On girls calling her “blubber” because she was an overweight child:
“I was very shy. I was vulnerable….Other girls teased me terribly. I was bullied. I’d just put my head down and get on with it. That was my means of survival.”
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