Kate Winslet fought for nine years to bring Lee Miller’s life to the big screen. The script of the eponymous film – which takes a new look at the biography of the woman who was one of the first war photographers – did not appeal to Hollywood producers, but the star pursued her project with obstinacy, until becoming its star and producer.
There is a beginning to everything. The spark that lit a blazing fire in Kate Winslet’s heart came from a table. In her world promotional tour, the actress has confided on several occasions how difficult the film “Lee Miller”, which is released this Wednesday in France, was to put together. The star sensitively plays the woman who was until then known to have been Man Ray’s muse, while she was also one of the first female war reporters.
It all started nine years ago, when a friend who worked at an auction house in Cornwall recommended a table that she particularly liked, the actress said. It turned out that this table was once the centerpiece of the kitchen at Farley Farm in East Sussex, which belonged to surrealist painter and art dealer Roland Penrose and his wife…photographer Lee Miller.
It was therefore inspired by this table that Kate Winslet began to take a closer interest in the life of Lee Miller. “I knew who she was and what she looked like,” the star told the Los Angeles Daily News. “I knew his work as a photographer. But what I was able to see very clearly is that, historically, she was at risk of being defined for eternity by the male gaze,” she said. “Googling her name in 2015, when I bought the table, I found ‘Lee Miller, former lover and muse of Man Ray. Former Vogue cover girl. Former model,’” she continued.
“I was like, ‘No, no, wait’. Where did all the other stuff go? I just wanted to get to the moment when Lee became Lee. The modeling period of her life lasted a very small part of her twenties, and she really hated being a model. She was deeply uncomfortable in this profession. She had learned photography from her father when she was a child, and she always knew how a camera worked,” the “Titanic” star continued.
Witness to Nazi ignominy
In his rather little-known biography, Lee Miller was alongside the American army when the allies, at the end of the Second World War, really discovered, before their eyes, the camps of Dachau or Auschwitz. Kate Winslet was therefore keen to tell the story of this “very important woman whose true story has never before been brought to the screen”.
“I wanted to tell the story of a middle-aged, flawed woman who had the courage to take risks and the determination to make her way in these male-dominated spaces,” said Kate Winslet, always for the Los Angeles Daily News. “To bear witness and be the visual voice of the victims of the conflict (…) I wanted to tell this version of Lee because I don’t even know how she had the courage to do what she did. She was not without fear, and she said she felt great fear, but she continued anyway. She didn’t turn away, and it was a phenomenal thing that she did.”
According to Kate Winslet, Lee Miller, who was sexually assaulted as a child, “transformed pain into strength”. “I think Lee was born determined. I think so. But I also think that what happened to her as a child gave rise to a deep feeling of injustice in her. And whether she realized it or not, I think it pushed her forward. In a way, she didn’t let what happened to her as a child define the outcome of her life and who she was (…) She lived her life on her own terms, on her own terms.”
Disdain and blackmail
Hollywood producers were reluctant to develop the story, with little or no interest in the fate of this woman, and it therefore took Kate Winslet nine years to see the film arrive in theaters. Nine years during which she had to face many challenges: from finding financing to the promise of an industry leader who would ensure that her “small” project was carried out… But at one condition: if and only if she committed to acting in his next film. A blackmail to which she did not give in.
“It’s so ridiculous you’re almost laughing about it,” Kate Winslet told KCRW. “But you know, the fact that this person could think they have such power is terrible. But the fact of waving it under my nose, of spreading it under my nose like some kind of strange bribe… weird, really weird!”
Kate Winslet ultimately ended up being both producer and star of the new film. The Oscar-winning actress said that Antony Penrose, Lee Miller’s son who opened the family archives to her, felt that she was the ideal person to play his mother.
Six years after Winslet began efforts to launch production, new momentum came when producer Kate Solomon signed on for the project, Kate Winslet said. “We eventually got the funding, but it was complicated,” she says. “Funding didn’t always arrive on time when we had to pay people, which was another challenge. But you know, you deal with it. You just keep moving forward.”
In addition to Kate Winslet as Lee Miller, the cast includes Alexander Skarsgård as Roland Penrose, Andy Samberg as Life magazine photographer David Scherman, and Marion Cotillard as Solange d’Ayen, Lee Miller’s friend and fashion editor of French Vogue.
“Lee Miller” by Ellen Kuras – renowned cinematographer who designed the lighting for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” – is released on Wednesday October 9 in France.
