Kate Winslet: ‘I Feel Excited About Being 40’

Kate Winslet certainly doesn’t look 40, and according to the actress, she doesn’t feel 40 either. In fact, she’s welcoming the milestone birthday (it’s in three days!) with open arms. And it’s going to be a huge year for her.

Winslet is set to star in three up-coming dramas (one of which she plays the love interest of the 25-year-old Liam Hemsworth) and is opening up in a new interview about exactly why she’s so excited to hit 40, even if she can’t get “rip-roaring drunk” anymore.

Chris Colls and courtesy of The EDIT, NET-A-PORTER.com

“I feel like the past two years have been different for me, deliberately so,” she tells Net-a-Porter.com’s The Edit. “I really wanted to mix it up a bit, and feel that I was going full pelt towards 40 having done as much as I could: pushed myself, challenged myself, exhausted myself, had as much fun as possible. The last two years of my life have put a different sort of rocket fuel up my backside.”

And Winslet definitely pushed herself. She stars in three films (Steve Jobs, The Dressmaker and Tripe 9) that are all slated to debut in the next six months. And all of the character’s show Winslet’s fiery side. She plays marketing guru, Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs, a “Russian-Israeli gangster moll” in Triple 9 and a seamstress who returns home seeking revenge in The Dressmaker, whose first line in the film is, “I’m back, you bastards!”

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Chris Colls and courtesy of The EDIT, NET-A-PORTER.com

On top of powerhouse characters, she also happens to be heartthrob Hemsworth’s love interest in The Dressmaker. Telling the magazine, “I did say to Jocelyn [Moorhouse, the director], ‘Are we going to get away with this?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, yeah, he looks older than he is.’ Anyway, I don’t feel old. I feel excited about being 40.”

She’s excited even if she can’t do everything she did twenty years ago. “You can get away with a lot more in your twenties,” she admits. “You can get away with having one too many vodka tonics, and you can wake up in the morning and not have a puffy face. I couldn’t go out now and get rip-roaring drunk; I’d take a week to recover and I value my life too much. Plus, I have children.”

Chris Colls and courtesy of The EDIT, NET-A-PORTER.com

She says she’s “baffled” by anyone that doesn’t think woman get more beautiful with age. “Confidence comes with age, and looking beautiful comes from the confidence someone has in themselves,” she says.

So what could possibly be next for the Oscar-winning powerhouse? She has hopes to direct, produce, write and play a man one day. “I would like to play a man at some point,” she shares. “I think it would be an interesting challenge.”

Chris Colls and courtesy of The EDIT, NET-A-PORTER.com

To see The Edit‘s full interview with Winslet go to net-a-porter.com or download the free Edit app at the App Store. What do you think of her outlook on aging? Sound off below.

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–Colleen Kratofil