A.M.: The interviews I've read don't reveal much about you as a person. One of them even focused on what kind of salad you were having for lunch.
KATE: That kind of interview makes me edgy. I spend the whole time worrying that the journalist is looking at my filthy jeans. [laughs]
A.M.: When I was nineteen, a writer from the Washington Post interviewed me at my parents' house. I had written a play, but the article was all about our house and the artwork on our walls. It felt like an invasion. Did you have a sense of growing up in public?
KATE: Well, not entirely. I think you do your real growing up between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. I did my first film, Heavenly Creatures, when I was seventeen, but it was really Titanic that put me in the public eye.
A.M.: That was released when you were twenty-two.
KATE: By the time Titanic came out, I had left school and done quite a lot in my life. I had been in a couple of long relationships, one with someone who died. I experienced the bulk of my emotional pain before I turned twenty-one so I was able to deal with all that stuff privately, thank god.
A.M.: If I were a journalist, I would ask you more about that, but I just can't. [both laugh] I've been wondering how you choose your roles. You've played a range of characters, from the spoiled heiress Rose in Titanic, to the eccentric writer Iris Murdoch in Iris. Does the time you spend as these people change the way you see yourself?
KATE: It exercises sides of my character that I didn't know I had. I get to explore emotional channels that can be really scary and also incredibly exciting. I love it when the character starts to play herself. That's freaky. But I don't necessarily feel transformed.
A.M.: So acting is a way to know yourself better?
KATE: I probably have a better understanding of who I am now than when I started, but that has a lot to do with having children and being married. When you're genuinely happy, you think, "Okay, I feel good standing on this piece of ground." I love being in New York and being a mom ÷ so much goes into a single day in the life of our family.
A.M.: What prompted your move to New York?
KATE: We're not here permanently. We came because Sam was directing Gypsy and Cabaret on Broadway, and he's developing stuff with people who are based in New York. And I didn't want to give birth to Joe in the U.K. I couldn't cope with the press situation there anymore.
A.M.: You were really under a looking glass.
KATE: Absolutely. I just want to be a mom and not be judged.
A.M.: Are you more off-duty here?
KATE: I feel so much more accepted in New York. It was really hard when Mia's dad and I split up. I met Sam about four or five months afterward, and of course the press blamed our divorce on that, saying that Sam and I had had an affair. Obviously we didn't, but the tabloids claimed that I was swanning around, going to premieres left and right, and that I didn't even live with my daughter.
A.M.: That would drive me apoplectic.
KATE: It was a terrible time. My relationship with Mia's dad was a mess. In the last year and a half of our marriage, I became a completely different person. I was isolated from my family and my friends. That was the period when I chose projects like Quills...
A.M.: Dark stuff.
KATE: Yeah. I started looking for supporting roles, because Jim didn't want me to be famous. He would read a script and immediately kill my passion for it by saying it wasn't good enough for me. That was the only time that I've ever lost control of my instincts.
A.M.: And having a baby is isolating in and of itself. Your life changes. You end up spending more time with your partner and less time running around.
KATE: When you have a child, there's a part of you that thinks, "Oh my god, I haven't grown up. How am I supposed to deal with a baby?" I had those feelings, plus I had had an emergency cesarean after thirty-seven hours of labor. I left Mia's dad when she was six months old. I was terrified, but I knew that I had to go.
A.M.: You filmed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind not long after your breakup. You play Clementine, a free spirit who erases the memory of her relationship with Jim Carrey's character, Joel.
KATE: I was lucky to have found Clementine. I had so much fun playing her ÷ it was depressing to discover that I was still me at the end of the day. [laughs] She was so out-there and complex. And she had great clothes and ridiculous hair! I was given freedom to really run with her. When I do period films, I have to bury the zanier part of myself. With Clementine, I gave free rein to the side of me that would do a terrible dance to a Justin Timberlake song with my sister.
A.M.: There are so many layered flashbacks in Eternal Sunshine. Was it a hard shoot?
KATE: I remember Jim Carrey asking me, "Are the hours always this tough on independent movies?" And I said, "Honey, you think this is fucking independent? This has got a studio behind it. This is not independent." Hideous Kinky ö that was an independent. My trailer was a tin caravan that was full of flies and had leaky air conditioning. But I didn't care. I wanted to get back to basics. A.M.: You made Hideous Kinky right after Titanic. You played a '60s hippie with two small children who had moved from London to Morocco.
KATE: I had really lost faith in acting after the whole Titanic experience. Instead of acting, my job was to be a hot young movie star. Suddenly I was on the cover of The Face and GQ. Other people were telling me who I was, and I was like, "What do you mean I'm hot? I'm not hot. I have a big ass."
A.M.: Hot is just a word. Your big ass is irrelevant.
KATE: Of course it is. I've still got a big ass. I just needed to figure out what it was about acting that I loved.
A.M.: What do you love about it?
KATE: Part of it is good old-fashioned showing off, like I used to do when I was five. Also, it's nice to be so indulgent, to wallow in your own emotional horseshit for twelve weeks while you're shooting. But it's also an attempt to overcome fears about yourself or to deal with a daunting emotion.
A.M.: Such as?
KATE: I don't know. All I know is that every time I start a film I feel like it's the first time I've ever acted. I think, "They should really get somebody else because I just can't do this." [laughs]
A.M.: Writing is like that, too. Every time I start something, I'm thrown back on myself. Making big Hollywood films must be surreal because you're truly making something out of nothing.
KATE: Yeah, it's totally surreal. I remember having phone conversations with my elder sister who was back in England when I was filming Titanic. She and my younger sister are both actresses as well, and I was whining about how tired I was. My sister said, "At the end of the day, Kate, you are lucky to be there." I thought, "Oh fuck, of course. How dare I whine to my sister who would love to get an audition right now, let alone a job."
A.M.: We all should be grateful for our successes, but that doesn't change the fact that some things are just a pain in the ass.
KATE: That's absolutely true. I feel like I genuinely don't have a right to whine, though, because I come from an acting family. In a way, that's even harder. [laughs]
A.M.: Do you go to the theater a lot?
KATE: More so since being with Sam, because it's much more a part of his life than mine. And I love it. If we can get the kids to bed and jump in a cab at ten past seven, we still have ten minutes to have a drink before the curtain goes up. While I was pregnant with Joe, one evening the babysitter came over, and I just took myself to a play. I would never have done that in London. Someone would have seen me, and the headline would read, "Poor Kate, out on her own at the theater."
A.M.: The great thing is, here nobody cares. What's a good day for you?
KATE: A great day is when I've had a really good chat with a girlfriend, I've spent time with Mia and had a laugh, and Sam's been around. It has to involve family and friends. I'm not the kind of person who wants time to myself to go shopping. That's my idea of hell.
A.M.: Clearly your