What they are saying about: Kate Winslet

The British thespian finally picked up an Oscar, winning the Best Actress category for her performance in The Reader. Here's what commentators and contemporaries think of her.

Fellow actress HALLE BERRY:

"Kate Winslet is always naked, sitting on a toilet, or running buck naked. She's free. I want to be the kind of actress who can really be comfortable with my body like that."

NEIL NORMAN in the Independent:

"Unlike other big girls - Kathleen Turner, Cheers-era Kirstie Alley, Nigella Lawson - Winslet is not a femme fatale. Her appeal is rather more benign, softer and more maternal. The glimpse of one white generously proportioned breast in Titanic was sufficient to fuel the fantasies of adolescent boys for years afterwards."

WESLEY MORRIS of the Boston Globe:

"She is the most casually carnal woman in the movies."

KATE WINSLET on Kate Winslet – during one of her famous humble moments:

"I do like to look good, of course I do. I never really feel that I'm a great beauty, though. Hollywood is full of beautiful women - and I am not one of them. I'm just an English girl who does her best."

Little Children director TODD FIELD on working with the star:

"She has the will of [Field Marshal Erwin] Rommel."

Titanic and Revolutionary Road co-star LEONARDO DICAPRIO:

"She takes on her characters like a detective might survey a crime scene... Kate is the most talented actress of her generation."

MICHAEL PHILLIPS joins the love-fest in the Chicago Tribune:

"It's silly to say so, especially because everyone else is saying so, but she really is an amazing actress, able to break your heart and chill your blood in the same instant."

LA Weekly's ELLA TAYLOR champions her fuller figure:

"Her body - a violin rather than a twig - has the old-fashioned voluptuousness of an early screen siren."