Kate Winslet brings wartime photographer to life in passion project ‘Lee’

LOS ANGELES: Titanic actor Kate Winslet’s passion project ‘Lee’, about acclaimed World War II photographer Lee Miller, hit cinemas this week after years in the making.

Miller was an American model turned Vogue war photographer, who, after being frustrated covering the blitz in the UK, decided to go to the frontline in France. Her images of war as well as the aftermath of the concentration camps still shock viewers to this day.

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While working on the project, Winslet, who was a hands-on producer on the film, found a kindred spirit in Miller.

“I found a lot of parallels between myself and her,” Winslet told Reuters. “I think in terms of the determination that she had and in terms of the ability she had to keep going and not taking no for an answer. That is really quite a lot like me.”

“In moments in developing the film, where I think, oh, my God, okay, how am I going to really be able to do this? Times when I felt like it was just me on my own, like crying at the kitchen table. I would think to myself, okay, what would Lee do?,” she added.

As Miller didn’t want to promote her photography, it was mainly forgotten about until her son Anthony Penrose made a discovery following her death in 1977.

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“He went into the attic of Farleys House where she lived and died and found 60,000 negatives and prints that she had put into old Heinz baked beans and Daz cardboard boxes that she had stashed in the attic just in an effort to forget,” said Winslet.

“Like so many people after the war who had trauma, they just wanted to put it away and never talk about it,” she added.

Penrose, who had a strained relationship with his mother, subsequently wrote ‘The Lives of Lee Miller’ in 1985, on which the film is based.

“For him, the film actually represents kind of closure in some way because he’s been able to say goodbye to a chapter of research and digging and looking for answers and constantly asking questions,” Winslet said.

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“And so in the moments when I would think, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t do it’, I would think ‘I’ve got to do for Tony, Okay. I just got to keep going and doing it for Tony. He has this film made in his lifetime’, and he’s 78 now and I’ve done it. So I feel so happy for him and I do feel very proud of myself.”