Kate Winslet melds into a model turned war photographer in ‘Lee’

FILE PHOTO: Kate Winslet and Lee Miller's son Antony Penrose attend the UK premiere of the film "Lee" at Leicester Square in London, Britain, September 3, 2024. REUTERS/Mina Kim/File Photo

By Rollo Ross and Danielle Broadway

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Kate Winslet felt a deep connection to her role as the real-life World War Two photographer Elizabeth “Lee” Miller in the film “Lee.”

"I found a lot of parallels between myself and her, 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,” said Winslet, who co-produced the film.

The “Titanic” actor recalled a time during the development of the film when she was sitting at her kitchen table crying as she wondered whether she was capable of portraying Miller in the film.

However, each moment of doubt became an opportunity for her to feel even closer to the photojournalist.

“I would think to myself, ‘OK, what would Lee do?,’" she added during a Zoom interview.

After many years of development for the British biographical drama film directed by Ellen Kuras, “Lee” will arrive in theaters on Friday, distributed by Roadside Attractions.

Miller was an American model in New York who traded posing in front of the camera for taking photos of the war for Vogue magazine.

She covered the Blitz, the 1940s German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, nurses at an army base in Oxford, and even one of the first depictions of the military using napalm.

Her images of the war and the aftermath of the concentration camps, and being a boundary-breaking female war correspondent eventually solidified Miller's place in history after the photojournalist's work resurfaced after being forgotten for some time.

Winslet said that if it wasn’t for Miller’s son, Antony Penrose, most people wouldn't know about the late photographer’s work.

"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," she said.

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

Miller’s son wrote a biography titled “The Lives of Lee Miller” in 1985, on which “Lee” is based.

“In the moments when I would think, 'Oh, my God, I can't do it,’ I would think, ‘I've got to do it for Tony, OK. I just got to keep going and doing it for Tony,'" Winslet said.

"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,” she added.

(Reporting by Rollo Ross and Danielle Broadway; Edited by Mary Milliken and Jonathan Oatis)