Kate Winslet
Gossip

Kate Winslet took home the Best Actress honor at the Oscars last night, and her stunning dress may leave her among the Academy Awards fashion winners as well.

As for Sarah Jessica Parker?

She was practically falling out of her dress. That is not without merit, but we expected something trendier from a star whose claim to fame is Sex and the City.

Which star's outfit do you prefer?

Who looked better at the Oscars?

Kate Winslet might be the best actress alive.

She's already been nominated for five Academy Awards and buzz over her role in Revolutionary Road make a sixth nomination likely.

But the star, who poses nude in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, earns our respect as much for her off-screen wisdom as for her on-screen talent.

In 2003, she famously objected when GQ airbrushed away her curves and elongated her legs for a cover shoot, saying: "I don't look like that and I don't desire to look like that... It wasn't that they simply retouched my image - they completely stretched it so I looked like I was six feet tall and a size two."

In the current feature article, Winslet talks about life as an overweight child:

"I was fat. I didn't know any fat famous actresses. I just did not see myself in that world at all, and I'm being very sincere. You know, once a fat kid, always a fat kid. Because you always think that you just look a little bit wrong or a little bit different from everyone else. And I still sort of have that."

Everyone should look as "wrong" and as "different" as Winslet.

Look at certin Nicole Richie pictures and prepare to be frightened. Proof of alien invasion has never been so strong.

But show Kate Winslet these photos - along with others of "size zero" models and actresses - and see how truly "unbelievably disturbing" she finds them. The star of The Holiday said she keeps magazines with such pictures out of the house, where they could be seen by her 6-year-old daughter, Mia.

"It's only a matter of time before she becomes aware of it and it frightens the life out of me," Winslet said.

Trust us, Kate, anything involving the minute Mischa Barton doesn't sit well with us, either.

"It's so disturbing, because girls are impressionable from 11 up to 19 or 20, even. Women are very impressionable at those ages," Winslet went on.

"They're trying to figure out who they are, and they want to be loved, and what I resent is that there is an image of perfection that is getting thinner and thinner, and it's truly upsetting to me."

To us, too. To Kate Bosworth? Not as much.

Besides Mia, whose father is Winslet's first husband, Jim Threapleton, the actress and her current husband, director Sam Mendes, have a son, Joe, who turns 3 on Dec. 22.

"I hope that in some small way I'm able to say 'I'm a normal person, I'm doing all right, I've got a lovely husband and children and I didn't lose weight to find those things, and those things are what should be important,' " Winslet said.

We hope America's Next Top Model, CariDee English, abides by these sage words and doesn't ditch her curves for bones

Don't get your hopes up, Jayden James Federline. You're probably stuck with your real, troubled parents.

After all, when Kate Winslet - already mom to Mia, 6, and Joe, 3 - says she wants more children, we assume she means those she actually gives birth to.

"I'm hoping to have more kids," Winslet tells InStyle in its December issue. "I don't know whether one or two. Oh, God, I would love to have more."

The Oscar-nominated actress already getting glowing reviews from her little girl.

"Mia said to me the other day in the car, 'Mum, I really love your cooking,' " Winslet said. "To me, it was a sort of incredibly triumphant moment, the fact that she observed that I do cook their meals."

This is a stark contrast to Katie Holmes, the mother of Suri Cruise, who only cooks up high credit card bills on lingerie shopping sprees.

Winslet added that she cares "very much about my kids' nutrition," often making salmon for Mia and lamb for Joe.

A three-year old eating lamb? Tobey Maguire better start grinding up some roast for his newborn.

Finally, Winslet said she hopes to instill a non-materialistic sensibility in her childen. At Christmas, she tells friends and family not to go overboard with gifts.

"I have to phone people and say, 'Please, books and pens only, or mittens and hats.'"

See, it could be worse, Jayden James. You could be receiving a pen for Christmas. Instead, K-Fed will probably be giving you a series of unused tickets from his canceled concerts.

They make perfect stocking stuffers.

As a teen in England, Kate Winslet says: "I was shy. I was vulnerable."

She was also never mistaken for Nicole Richie.

Slight overweight, Winlet was referred to as "blubber" by other kids, she tells Parade in its upcoming issue. "Other girls teased me terribly. I was bullied, I would just put my head down and get on with it. This was my means of survival."

Things didn't get easier for the actress. At 15, before she fell in love with Leonardo DiCaprio on screen, Winslet dealt with serious feelings for an older man in real life: 28-year-old television actor and writer Stephen Tredre.

"Stephen made me feel secure and embraced," says the Little Children actress, 31, who now lives in Manhattan with her husband, director Sam Mendes, 41, and kids Mia, 6, and Joe, 2.

By 16, Winslet had dropped out of high school and was working in a deli when she landed her first film role: the lead in 1994's Peter Jackson-directed Heavenly Creatures.

But shortly before Winslet began filming 1995's Sense and Sensibility, Tredre was diagnosed with bone cancer.

"There was no point to his suffering. No rhyme or reason to it," she says. "When Stephen had gotten better and his cancer was in remission, we broke up. I don't know why. 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."

After their split, "He got ill again. Stephen and I talked every day. This was not somebody I'd turn my back on."

Tredre died in 1997, the week Titanic opened. Winslet missed the movie's Los Angeles premiere to be at his funeral.

"Looking back," she says, "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."

Now, she's one of the best actresses alive. Her role with Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind earned Winslet an Oscar nomination.

When Kate Winslet has trouble filming a sex scene, she always recalls her intimate moments with this writer Leonardo DiCaprio. And who can blame her.

The 31-year-old struggled while shooting a sexy encounter with her Little Children co-star, Patrick Wilson, so she whisked herself back to 1997.

That year, of course, is Titanic was released and went on to claim its place among the top-grossing movies of all time, making Kate Winslet almost a household name.

She and DiCaprio forged a strong connection during the picture -- so much so that it's helping her to this day when she has to get freaky with other actors.

"I couldn't see [Wilson's] face so I just kept thinking that it was me and Leo all over again. That thought really helps get through it," Kate said of her conundrum.

Interestingly, this is similar to T.H. Gossip's approach to blogging.

When forced to write about someone boring such as, say, Peter Sarsgaard, we just imagine we're writing about Britney Spears or someone like that. Then we imagine our girl Britney Spears back in the good, hot olden days before Sutton Pierce and K-Fed.

Then we take shots of straight bourbon. You know, standard operating procedure.