Meet Mia Threapleton, Kate Winslet's daughter and Cannes' rising star

La trama fenicia is Wes Anderson’s latest film and one of the most talked-about premieres at the Cannes Film Festival, set against the backdrop of sun, cinema, and luxury. Dropping right at the festival’s midpoint, it’s the big event on Sunday, May 18. The film comes with a stacked cast—Benicio del Toro, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Scarlett Johansson—alongside rising star Mia Threapleton in the lead role. It’s the part that will put her in front of a global audience and cement her place in Hollywood. For many, it’ll also be the moment they learn who she really is.

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Mia, 24, is the daughter of Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet, who was just 22 when she earned her first Academy Award nomination for Titanic. While Mia has no interest in hiding her famous roots—she recently starred alongside her mother in the series I Am Ruth, a role that won Winslet a BAFTA—she’s determined to carve out her path and steer clear of the “nepo baby” label. “She was incredibly supportive of my desire to do this on my own, because that’s how she did it—on her own,” Mia told Vanity Fair. Born on October 12, 2000, in London during Winslet’s first marriage to director Jim Threapleton, Mia is often noted for her striking resemblance to her father, though many of her mother’s features are unmistakably present.

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Winslet and Threapleton met in 1997 on the set of Hideous Kinky in Morocco—she was starring in the film, and he was working as an assistant director. A year later, they got married at the parish church in Reading, Berkshire, Winslet’s hometown, just months after Titanic had turned her into a global star. The marriage didn’t last long; they announced their divorce in 2001. After the split, Winslet moved to New York, and in May 2003, she married director Sam Mendes on the Caribbean island of Anguilla. Mia grew up between Manhattan’s skyscrapers and the English countryside of the Cotswolds, where the family had bought Westcote Manor, a grand country house near Cheltenham. As a child, she loved spending time there.

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The Titanic actress has always made it a priority to keep her three children out of the spotlight, wanting them to grow up free to choose their paths without the weight of her fame. That’s been true for Mia and her two younger brothers: 19-year-old Joe Alfie, from Winslet’s marriage to Mendes, and 11-year-old Bear Blaze, from her current marriage to Edward Abel Smith, Richard Branson’s nephew. “We knew absolutely nothing,” says Mia, now the breakout star of Wes Anderson’s latest film. She had no idea about her mother’s award-winning career—Hollywood felt completely distant. “I’ve never had social media. I don’t want it. I’ve never read magazines either. So I wasn’t really aware of her fame until I hit my later teens,” she explains in the Vanity Fair interview. Still, the pull of acting was strong. At 13, she realized it was what she truly wanted and told her mom.

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“What really mattered to her was that by using a different last name, she flew under the radar with casting directors—they didn’t know she was my daughter, and that was great for her confidence,” said Kate Winslet. “When it comes to acting, she doesn’t need me at all. Sometimes she even looks at me and says, ‘Shut up, Mum, let me do it!’” the Oscar winner shared about her daughter’s work in film. Mia first stepped in front of the camera at 14 in A Little Chaos, playing Helene, while her mother starred in the lead role. In 2020, she appeared in the Italian film Shadows, followed by the U.S. TV series Dangerous Liaisons in 2022. She also starred in Channel 4’s I Am Ruth and, in 2023, in the British series The Buccaneers.

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