Kate Winslet wanted to "celebrate" the life of Lee Miller.
Kate Winslet stars as war photographer Lee Miller in the biopic
The 48-year-old star plays the model-turned-photographer – who covered several major events during World War II for Vogue – in the new biopic 'Lee' and is hoping to introduce her remarkable story to a new generation.
Kate told Empire magazine: "I wanted to try and redefine how people might discover her.
"For perhaps another generation of young women, perhaps people who know her images or what she looked like but don't know this defining decade of her life, that put her through hell. What she lived through and what she achieved is something. It should be celebrated. It's her legacy."
Lee was one of the few female photographers in the field during World War II and Kate felt that capturing a woman's perspective of events was vital for the sake of the picture.
The Oscar-winning actress said: "Lee really did see the world through female eyes. She was also a woman rebelling against the male gaze.
"She was leaving it behind, shedding it, like a f****** skin, almost scrubbing it off herself – and immersing herself in violence and dirt in order to eradicate it from her own system, let alone the memory that everyone else had of her."
Winslet has been attached to the flick for several years and says the long wait to get it to the screen demonstrates that it is still "hard to make films as a woman" and "about women".
Speaking at the Munich International Film Festival recently, Kate said: "We chose to delay the release of 'Lee' because of the strike and because I wanted to be able to talk about the real true labour of love that it was for me and my producing partner Kate Solomon to make this film.
"It’s hard to make films as a woman and it is hard to make films about women. I hope with this film people will be more open-eared and more open-eyed to wanting to absorb stories of phenomenally important historical figures like the formidable Lee Miller."
Tagged in Kate Winslet