'Kate's fame was kiss of death for Jim'

by LYNDA LEE-POTTER, Daily Mail

When Kate Winslet married Jim Threapleton she was plump and quite famous. She's now thin and hugely famous.

Meanwhile, her marriage to her rather ordinary looking, unsuccessful, impecunious husband is over.

'No other parties are involved in this amicable and respectful separation,' says her spokesman, which is a ridiculous comment.

A marriage split is never amicable because, invariably, there is a partner who wants to leave and one who wants to battle on.

The official statement probably used the strange word 'respectful' as Kate wished to make it clear they are not splitting up because she's got too big for her boots, let fame go to her head or begun to think her rarely employed chap is a failure.

They met when he was a third assistant film director, which means dogsbody. Since then, he's rarely worked. They're parting, I suspect, because she got bored with a house-husband who looked after the baby.

He, no doubt, thought that it was time she spent more time at home.

The announcement is no surprise because they always seemed an illmatched couple. It was difficult to think of the alluring Kate as Mrs Threapleton, though she always tried to boost her husband's ego.

She talked at length about their love, happiness and their future.

When they first met she was purporting to be the girl next door. She was terrified of being seduced by fame so, instinctively, chose an ordinary boy and talked about him as if he were Mr Darcy.

She's always extolled her ordinariness but she's not ordinary. She was a child actress who comes from a theatrical family.

She began her career at 13 in a Sugar Puffs ad and rarely stops acting, even off stage. For a long time she acted the part of a young, besotted wife with a perfect life.

When she became a sensation in Titanic she acted being unspoilt. When she was plump she acted the role of a woman who was proud of her curves and her cleavage.

Then she went on a diet and said when she'd been porky she'd hated herself. She rewrites the script of her life, believes the new version and then plays the part with emotional intensity.

Now she's playing the part of a wife who is devastated at the end of her marriage to a good man. In her heart I suspect she's relieved. She was only 22 when they began to live together. He was her first serious romance after she split with scriptwriter Stephen Tredre, who died of cancer in 1997.

She was anguished by his death and clearly needed a shoulder to cry on.

It should have been a summer romance but it developed into marriage. He comforted her and told her he loved her sturdy figure. She believed him for a while but then the real, focused, steely Kate emerged.

She's an instinctive, terrific actress with a luminous beauty who's going to be a huge star. She insists there's no other chap but I'd be surprised if that were true for long.

Most half-tolerable marriages stagger on until one partner meets somebody else.

She works in a heady environment surrounded by dazzling people. She's been motivated to lose four stone, and nothing takes a woman's appetite away more than the thought of a new romance.

Kate's days of purporting to be the unspoilt ingenue are over. She's finally come to terms with her fame and her future, so Jim had to go.

There's no role for him now in her powerful world.

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