There’s a reason Kate Winslet has spent the last 10 years getting a biopic made – and that is Lee Miller, a model turned photographer whose incredible life is detailed in Friday’s “Lee.”
Today, Miller is recognized as among the greatest WWII photographers, an accomplishment even more extraordinary when considering the restrictions women faced as war correspondents.
And Miller’s wartime exploits are but a piece of a life so very extraordinary. “I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of playing her,” Winslet, who also produced, acknowledged in a Zoom interview, “but I didn’t feel afraid.
“Because I felt her story was so important. I also hoped that in making this film, audiences would discover this Lee. This person who went to war” – as British Vogue’s wartime correspondent – “as a flawed, middle-aged woman — not some newbie.
“She had lived a lot of life at this point and she did something so profoundly brave. She took risks. She was incredibly courageous. She wasn’t fearless — she felt fear and she wrote about that quite a lot, actually. But this was somebody who made her way into male-dominated spaces for women in order to document the war.
“In order to be that visual voice for victims whose stories may otherwise have never been told. All those missing people — she was determined she was going to find them and was going to document what had happened to them.
“So I didn’t feel intimidated. Because I felt the spirit of her almost seeping into me as I was developing the script, which took place over a number of years.
“Coming to play her, it felt like a responsibility. But also like a duty. It was very important to me to tell her story.”
Important enough that during production when there was a gap in finances, Winslet, 48, stepped up with her own money to pay the crew for two weeks.
“That’s true. I mean, it’s an independent film – and when you’re making independent films, sometimes you just go Old School and you do whatever you can to keep it going.
“There was a moment in the development process as well,” she noted, “where a writer needed to be paid and there weren’t the funds. We just stepped in, in areas that we needed to, in order to make sure that people were respected. And also that the process didn’t stop.
“Because momentum is an incredibly important thing when you’re making films. But it’s particularly important as a woman making a film about a woman to keep that momentum going. To have that energy, bring everyone with you and just not to give up. So that was just what I did.”
“Lee” is in theaters Sept. 27
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