Kate Winslet says her family never, ever watch The Holiday

For many families, it has become an annual Christmas tradition – gathering together to watch The Holiday.

The romantic comedy from 2006 told the tale of two broken-hearted women, played by Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz, arranging a Transatlantic house-swap to help them make it through Christmas. Jude Law and Jack Black were the love interests.

But one family which does not have a yearly yuletide yearning to view the film is Winslet’s.

“No, we haven’t seen The Holiday for years,” she says adamantly, adding: “We don’t sit down and watch films I’m in. I barely do.”

“You know, almost everything I’ve been in I’ve only seen once,” Winslet continues.

“When you watch the finished product, for most actors, that’s an excruciating experience. It’s something you kind of have to go through.”

The subject has come up because Kate Winslet is talking to the BBC about her first Christmas film for almost 20 years, Goodbye June.

Written by her son Joe Anders, it was inspired by the death of his grandmother Sally, Winslet’s own mother, from ovarian cancer in 2017. It tells the story of siblings trying to put disputes aside to unite and honour their mother as she undergoes palliative care at Christmas.

“It’s not actually a film about dying,” says Winslet, explaining why she thinks it will make a suitable festive watch on Christmas Eve, the day it drops on Netflix.

“It’s a film about living more than anything. People have been finding it very, very uplifting.”

Not only does she star opposite Dame Helen Mirren, Timothy Spall, Andrea Riseborough and Stephen Merchant (a thank you for her famous turn in Extras), but this is her directorial debut.

After a decade of considering making a move behind the camera, and people asking her why she had not, Winslet decided that she finally had the space to do so.

“Now is a time when I’ve felt that my children are grown up enough that I can be that little more absent, just mentally absent,” explains the Oscar, Emmy and Grammy-winner.

“I just don’t think I would have honestly had the time before now, because I’ve been a mum since I was 25 and that’s obviously been my priority alongside acting, and that was already a bit of a juggle.”

She insists she would not have done it if she was not ready.

“There is a thing with female filmmakers, certainly actresses who turn into directors, there’s a strange almost judgey thing. ‘Do we really know what we are talking about? Do we really know what we are doing with the camera?’

“But I’ve been in front of cameras for 33 years, so sort of, by osmosis, [you] learn the technical side of it. I do really feel at this time in my life I have learnt everything.”

Last year, when it came to the top 100 films at the UK box office, 16 were directed or co-directed by women, 84 by men. Winslet has a theory as to why that is.

“A lot of us are mothers and it really is very hard. You can’t just stop doing that to go to work, but actually the job of being a director is so incredibly intense and demanding, it is just simply not possible.

“But I do think there is also a lack of belief in women being able to do it. Actually, we’re incredibly forward thinking, incredibly resilient, we can cope extremely well with very little sleep and we get things done.”

Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Stewart and Zoë Kravitz have all recently made their directorial debuts, while Dakota Johnson is another actress set to do so soon.

Winslet has worked with some of the most successful directors in movie history; James Cameron, Peter Jackson and Jane Campion, but she says her biggest influence has been Australian Jocelyn Moorehouse, whose films include Proof, How to Make an American Quilt, and The Dressmaker, in which Winslet starred.

“She has been subjected to quite a lot of judgement and scrutiny. It’s been quite hard for her to carve her own path, so I was very inspired by her determination.”

And Winslet hopes that her choice to direct, will inspire a new generation.

“I certainly felt that in making the decision to direct now, at this time in my life – I turned 50 this year – it felt meaningful to me, to be actively participating in hopefully changing that culture,” she says.

“If there is more of us doing it then hopefully more will follow and we’ll be giving across the message that we are perfectly capable of doing that job just as well as the men.”

Two of Winslet’s three children have followed her into the film industry, but are determined to make a name of their own, literally, with both making conscious decisions not to use her surname.

Daughter Mia Threapleton, 25, with whom Winslet starred in the Bafta-winning TV drama I Am Ruth, recently starred opposite Benico del Toro in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme.

Winslet’s son Joe Anders, 21, not only wrote the screenplay for Goodbye June, but last year appeared alongside his mum in Lee, and had a small role in 1917, directed by his father Sam Mendes.

Kate Winslet finds it offensive when people suggest that they are nepo babies.

“These kids are not getting a leg up,” she insists.

“Joe would say to me, ‘I don’t want people to think this film is just being made because you’re my mum’.

“The film would have been made with or without me. The script is so good. It was the script that attracted all these wonderful actors,” she argues.

“With Mia, I just try to say to my children, ‘follow your heart’.

“There are lots and lots of people in the world whose children go into a similar family business, whether it’s being a judge or a lawyer or a doctor. And it doesn’t surprise me at all that my children wanted to do something creative with their lives, having always expressed a great passion for writing and acting and music as well.

“But that doesn’t necessarily translate to being able to actually get jobs and actually gain respect from your peers and people around you. And both of them have separately carved their own paths.

“Part of it is actually teaching them to ignore the white noise of silly terms like nepo baby, which you can’t really do anything about.”

Goodbye June is in cinemas from Friday and on Netflix from Christmas Eve. The Holiday is on BBC iPlayer.