As Kate Winslet becomes the latest Hollywood actress to win a gong then lose a husband... Oh, darlings were you just too alike to survive?

By Jan Moir

Split: Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes are strikingly similar


Come to think of it, she did look a bit glum at the Oscars. Despite the dazzle of her gossamer silver gown, her Veronica Lake hair and that blaze of Tiffany diamonds at her perfect throat, something was clearly amiss with Kate Winslet.

Walking solo down the red carpet earlier this month, our girl looked ethereal but pained; think Tinkerbell with trapped wind and you get the picture.

And yes, actually, it was slightly weird the way she clung to Jeff Bridges when presenting him with his best actor Oscar. Five more seconds, and the pair of them would have been wrestling like bears on the floor of the Shrine Auditorium. With him shouting: 'Get offa me, you crazy limey broad!'

It didn't quite come to that, of course. Yet there was the persistent feeling, as a downbeat Winslet floated around the Oscar parties like a shimmering but noble wraith, confusing her pain with her art in the finest of Hollywood traditions, that something was definitely up. And now we all know exactly what it was.

After nine years of friendship, seven years of wedded bliss, one film made together, one child ditto, Kate Winslet's marriage to film director Sam Mendes is over. A special announcement was made by their lawyers on Monday, followed by the tolling of muffled bells on Tuesday and - no doubt - the bubble of scandalous rumour by lunchtime today.

Yet amid the usual flurry of gossip and condolence - both of these equally heartfelt - only one thing is for certain: Britain's most glamorous Hollywood power-couple since Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are no more. Their relationship has shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the choir invisible quicker than you can say: 'Was anyone else involved?'

It is so sad. For Winslet, 34, and Mendes, 44, really did seem like the perfect couple. Both born in Reading, they always professed a determination to remain down-to-earth and ordinary, despite all evidence to the contrary - including the eight-bedroom Cotswold mansion (complete with mulberry garden), the Manhattan apartment, the jet-set lifestyle and the brace of Oscars between them.


The curse of the Oscar: Winslet announced her relationship was over shortly after winning the coveted award


As Winslet's character in the 2008 film Revolutionary Road - the story of a marriage break-up which was the couple's first and doubtless last professional collaboration - put it: 'We're normal, aren't we? We're just like other people.'

Well no, darlings, not quite. I mean; just look at the pair of you.

Kate and Sam! Woo hoo. They were obviously just meant to be together; two peas in a particularly gorgeous pod. For not counting Mummy and Daddy Woodentop, has there ever been a more lookalike husband and wife?

Their physical similarities are almost eerie; Kate and Sam have the same face shape, the same broad and clear forehead, the same chunky eyebrows, the same eyes, the same lips and, most of all, the same great big shark- eating, krill- chomping, I'm-so-ordinary-it-hurts grin.

It would take sonar imaging to fathom the daily depths of narcissism they must have experienced as they once devotedly looked into each other's eyes.

Really, we should have seen the warning signs when Sam began growing interesting beards and experimenting with assorted goatees and moustaches, most of which rampaged across his face like an unattractive attack of Japanese knotweed. It was clearly a bid to blot out the creeping Kate-ness that stared back at him, accusingly, when he looked at himself in the mirror every morning. We can all feel his pain.

Yet the split still came as a surprise. What on earth happened to this stardust couple, who have spent much of the past seven years droning on about how happy together they are? And how has girl-next-door Kate Winslet found herself, at the age of 34, with two divorces already on the charge sheet and two children to care for?

Despite her professions of normalcy, Kate is an ultra-glam Hollywood film star, possessed of a thunderous beauty. Her smile is incandescent, her breasts are stupendous (if she really had been on the Titanic, it never would have sunk). Yet even she cannot keep a man, or make a marriage work.

Of course, many will blame the curse of the Oscars for the Winslet/Mendes marriage break-up. And it certainly seems to be a corrosive trend; our Kate is just the latest in a long line of female Oscar winners to have suffered a drastic reversal of romantic fortunes after claiming her glittering prize. Poor Sandra Bullock will be praying that this is no bad omen for her, yet you have to wonder what on earth happens behind the eternally brittle facade of these sugar-glass relationships. One tiny tap on the surface, and they smash into a million pieces.

Yes, it is true that one in three mortal marriages end in divorce these days. Yet over and over again we see the evidence that celebrity marriages are still more fragile than most.

Up there in Tinseltown, where the air is rarefied and the teeth are whiter than Everest snowfall, something different happens. In the gated community of celebrity life, stars are cosseted and petted like new-born lambs. It clearly warps their sensibilities, in some way.


Divorced: Winslet and her first husband Jim Threapleton on their wedding day in 1998


Their lives revolve around being a star; they grow used to being the magnetic north in any social or work situation. They have an entourage and for them it's all about the me.

So when things do go wrong in their marriages and relationships, they don't have the aptitude or ability to work to make them better, in the way ordinary people must.

While we are in the intensive care phase, thrashing out a compromise, they grow weary, dabble in casual treachery, give in to temptation, fail to respond to any situation where they are not the centre of attention.

When everything does not exactly suit them, they up-sticks and move on. Why do they bother getting married in the first place?

In Kate Winslet's second marriage - just like her first, to assistant director Jim Threapleton - the pendulum of power swung back and forth with deadly monotony.

When they first met, the axis of power was in Mendes's favour. He was a top film director, still fresh from the success of his American Beauty winning a best picture Oscar. Back then, he was the big cheese to her country mouse, for Kate had been in a series of flops after Titanic.

Then the balance of power shifted. His subsequent films have not been as successful, whereas she has triumphed at the box office and is sought after by every director in Hollywood.

These days, she is the big Camembert, while he must be content to squeak along in her cheesy wake. Who knows what that does to the male psyche, but whatever it is, it sure ain't good. As a broken trail of lovelorn female Oscar winners will testify.

Meanwhile, Winslet, like most big stars, is self-obsessed and high maintenance in equal measure. And - most importantly - she doesn't need Mendes any more. It is the age-old recipe for celebrity marital disaster and perhaps, in this instance, an inevitable end.

For despite her protestations and carefully whisked image, don't you think that there was always something rather phoney about old bangers-and-mash Kate? Only someone who believes that she is secretly marked out for an extraordinary destiny would protest about her ordinariness so much.

Only someone who secretly believed in her specialness would say that she was nothing special, over and over again.

Today, Kate Winslet might grind her perfectly scalloped teeth in dismay as she looks back at the smoking ruins of her two marriages. But it is forward and to the future where her gaze, as always, is focused the most.

source: dailymail