After nine years, Kate Winslet’s WWII biopic about photographer Lee Miller sees the light

LOS ANGELES – They played lovers Jack and Rose in the iconic 1997 disaster film Titanic, the first movie to make more than US$1 billion at the global box office.

And American actor Leonardo DiCaprio, 50, and British actress Kate Winslet, 49, have been friends ever since, with DiCaprio describing his former co-star as “one of the great talents of my generation”.

He says this while introducing Winslet at a screening of her new biographical drama Lee, held in Los Angeles in November.

The movie, which opens in Singapore cinemas on Jan 16, casts Winslet as the late Lee Miller, an American fashion model who became a photographer for British Vogue during World War II.

DiCaprio is not in the film, which also stars Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgard and Marion Cotillard.

But the star – who won the Best Actor Oscar for survival drama The Revenant (2015) – says Winslet has been bending his ear about this project for almost a decade.

“Kate has dedicated herself to the film and to honouring Lee’s legacy over the course of nine years,” he says.

“I remember her speaking about this to me personally nine years ago. This has been a massive passion project for her.

“And it’s a journey that speaks to the depth of Kate’s passion and her dedication to telling stories that need to be remembered.”

Addressing her directly at the event, DiCaprio – who also played Winslet’s husband in the romantic drama Revolutionary Road (2008) – adds: “Kate, my dear friend, your work in this film has been nothing short of transformative.

“I continue to admire your strength, your integrity, your talent and your passion for every single project that you create.”

Joining him onstage and hugging him, Winslet says: “I can’t even look at Leo now or I’m going to cry.”

Winslet won a Best Actress Oscar for playing a Nazi camp guard in the romantic drama The Reader (2008), and was nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama at the Golden Globes for her role in Lee.

She earned her first full producer credit working on Lee, an independent film that ran into numerous difficulties with financing and took eight arduous years to complete.

At one point, the actress even took it on herself to personally cover the salaries of the whole cast and crew for two weeks.

“Making this film, for me, was really about people showing up with good grace and being willing to support me telling this story,” says the star, who won Emmys for her performances in crime drama Mare Of Easttown (2021) and historical drama Mildred Pierce (2011).

And the story was one that “could have been hidden from view forever”, she notes, referring to how Miller’s wartime accomplishments were not widely known till her son became aware of them after her death in 1977, and began pushing for her to be recognised.

In addition to covering historic events such as the London Blitz, Miller was the first female photojournalist to follow the United States army to the front lines of the war in Europe.

She photographed the liberation of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, and her work became some of the earliest photographic evidence of the Holocaust.

DiCaprio says: “Lee Miller not only captured some of the most harrowing images of World War II, but also served as a fierce witness to history’s bleakest moments.

“She documented the horrors of the concentration camps and the devastation of Europe that readers did not always see: the women, the children and the missing.”

But, in a December 2024 interview with US news programme 60 Minutes, Winslet says she had to fight to bring Miller’s complicated story to the screen.

“There was one potential investor who said to me, ‘Why should I like this woman?’ She’s drunk, she’s loud, she…’ – I mean, he probably just stopped short of saying she has wrinkles on her face.”

But independent film-making “has always been extremely difficult”, she is quoted as saying in a December 2024 interview with entertainment publication The Hollywood Reporter. “And I am no exception to this reality.”