Kate Winslet has enjoyed a career than has spanned twenty years and made her one of the most successful actresses that this country has ever produced.
Every performance that she delivers is a must see and she joins an ensemble cast this week in Steven Soderbergh's Contagion.
To celebrate the release of the movie and Winslet's return to the big screen we take a look at some of her movies that you really should see.
- Heavenly Creatures
Winslet may have kicked off her career in 1991 but it was Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures that proved to be her breakthrough role.
She took on the role of Juliet Hulme in the film, a young girl who helps kill the mother of her best friend.
It was a haunting and chilling movie that was raved about by the critics when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival that year.
At just seventeen years old Winslet had marked herself as a talent to watch out for with her superb central performance.
- Titanic
It's hard to believe that Titanic is fourteen years old but it is the role that Winslet is still perhaps best know for.
The movie saw her team up with Leonardo DiCaprio and filmmaker James Cameron as they went on to make movie history.
Winslet and DiCaprio produce a very real and moving relationship as the movie develops, and that is one of the reasons this movie was so loved; there was a real human element to an event we know so well.
The film went on to gross in excess of $1.8 billion at the global box office - the biggest grossing movie of all time until Avatar came along in 2009.
Winslet's performance as Rose saw her pick up a second Oscar nomination and her first for Best Actress.
- Iris
In 2001 she swapped the blockbuster for drama as she starred in Iris, which was directed by Richard Eyre.
Winslet took on the role of a young Iris Murdoch, played later in the movie by Judi Dench, in a movie that was based on the memoirs of her husband.
In later life Iris suffered from dementia but in her early years Iris was a captivating young woman - and Winslet was the perfect choice.
She captivated the very essence of Iris and a vibrant and yet a very complicated woman. For her performance another Bust Supporting Actress Oscar nomination came her way.
- The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Another role that Winslet is forever remembered for is that of Clementine Kruczynski in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - which also starred Jim Carrey.
The movie follows a couple undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour.
But it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with.
While the movie does follows character trapped in their own mind it's the very human side of the movie that makes it so good and so memorable.
Carrey & Winslet are superb together as they desperately try to hang on to what they were trying to forget in what it quite a melancholic study of romance and relationships.
- Little Children
In 2006 she was back on the big screen with Little Children, in what one of the best performances of her career, as she teamed up with Patrick Wilson.
The lives of two lovelorn spouses from separate marriages, a registered sex offender, and a disgraced ex-police officer intersect as they struggle to resist their vulnerabilities and temptations.
It's a superb turn from Winslet as a disenchanted housewife who struggles with the mundane and monotonous elements of her life.
For her performance there was another Best Actress nod for Winslet, this time losing out to Helen Mirren for The Queen
- The Reader
But Winslet did get her hands, finally, on an Oscar in 2009 with her superb performance in The Read - which was directed by Stephen Daldry.
Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.
It was a moving performance from Winslet in what is truly a haunting movie that looks at love and guilt as well as morality.
Winslet creates a very fascinating character who is, in fact, the villain.
- Contagion
She is back this week as she is joined on the cast list by Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law.
Contagion follows the rapid progress of a lethal airborne virus that kills within days. As the fast-moving epidemic grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than the virus itself.
At the same time, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart.
Contagion is released 21st October.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Kate Winslet