Winslet quits movies for full-time motherhood

"My life is very good and I need to switch off from movies and just be a parent for a while." Kate has two children - Mia Honey, five, from her marriage to director Jim Threapleton (the couple divorced in 2001), and Joe Alfie, two, with her Oscar-winning director husband Sam Mendes.

Home sick

Chatting at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, Kate looked happy and relaxed, yet confessed to feeling anxious because she hadn't seen her brood for a while.

"Even when I'm working I try to have the kids visit me as much as possible," says Winslet.

"So it's been odd for me being here and not having them around, playing with them. I know it sounds pathetic, but I've really been missing them." Kate says she is looking forward to going back to Belsize Park, where she and Mendes, have their principal home. They also live in New York and the Cotswolds.

Kate insists she and Sam, whom she married in 2003, try to be as low-key as possible.

"It's important to me that my children don't think of their mother as this strange celebrity creature," she says.

"My husband and I both want to give them as normal a life as possible. I certainly benefited from the kind of grounding my parents, who were both in the business, gave me.

"My daughter has seen me on the set several times but she's not particularly enamoured of her mother's world.

"She likes to come to visit me at work and I love it too, but it's bit boring for her.

"I love the fact that my kids are very normal and not the typical movie-set children. They have a whole other world and I very much want to keep it that way."

Body image

For years, Kate has been outspoken about her refusal to lose weight to conform to the Hollywood ideal and when GQ magazine published photographs of her which had been airbrushed to make her look thinner, she issued a statement saying that the alterations were made without her consent.

So it's no surprise that she has strong views on the controversy surrounding overly thin models in fashion shows.

"Women shouldn't be under pressure to conform to a ridiculously perfect body image," she says.

"It's not even perfect - it's both unreal and unhealthy. I don't want my daughter or other girls growing up thinking that you have to look thin to be considered attractive or normal. Women shouldn't be under this intense kind of pressure to correspond to this impossible standard of what we should look like to feel secure and comfortable in clothes. The situation (in fashion) is out of control.

"I hope I can offer women some support in not feeling awkward or unattractive if you're not thin.

"I want to stay normal and true to myself and be a different kind of role model to young women. We need to be healthy."

Kate's voluptuous frame has never prevented her doing nude scenes in films. She appears naked again in Little Children.

"I remember walking on the set to do it, thinking, 'How am I going to pull this off ?' The belly is certainly not what it was. The boobs are certainly not what they were," she says.

"You do think, 'Oh, God', but at the same time I was playing a mother and it's so important to me to have those things look as real as possible.

"I suppose it will be quite good to look back on this film when I'm 60 and I can go, 'Aha! Look what I did! And I'd had two children at the time'."