Kate Winslet was nominated by the international journalists voting for the Golden Globes as Best Actress for her portrayal of photographer Lee Miller in the film Lee that she produced, first directorial effort by Ellen Kuras, with Andy Samberg, Josh O’Connor, Andrea Riseborough, Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard.
What difficulties did you face in finding funding to produce this independent film?
I firmly believe that, if you find something in the life that you are passionate about, you must continue to pursue it, but it was a struggle and a challenge to get investments to pay for various drafts of the script, because it took some time to examine the vast biography of Lee Miller and distill it in the most important decade of his career, of which he was very proud, but of which no one knew the details. It was frustrating to hear that so many potential male investors were unable to sympathize with Lee, because she had problems with alcoholism, depression and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). And yet she was someone who had done extraordinary things to reveal the truth, to bear witness to the atrocities of the Nazi regime, when she photographed mountains of corpses in the Dachau concentration camp. It was a great privilege for me to tell Lee’s story, without sexualizing her with a male gaze, as it happened when she was between twenty and thirty years old, but to present a middle-aged woman with many faults who went to war to document it for the female readers of Vogue.
Do you identify with Lee Miller’s courage and spirit of independence?
Lee’s actions inspire us and remind us how important it is to do something with our lives, as she did, without considering the risks. After the war ended, she returned to London, but then went back to Vienna and Hungary to photograph the aftermath. I can certainly identify with her strength and determination. Lee was a woman who 80 years ago redefined femininity as resistance and power, compassion, solidarity and integrity.
What relationship did you have with Antony Penrose, the son of Lee Miller, who in 1985 wrote his mother’s biography, The Lives of Lee Miller, after her death in 1977?
Antony, who is still alive and 77 years old, was for me an extremely important part of the creative process, which lasted 9 years, and in fact motivated me to make this film for him, because he needed an emotional closure. He gave me full access to his mother’s archives, all her photography, letters and personal diaries, her clothes and her cameras. And this helped me understand the inner world of this woman, who was sometimes very fractured, after the amount of suffering she had seen during the war. Antony only discovered who his mother really was after her death, when his wife suggested going through those boxes that were in the attic to look for pictures of her husband as a child and see if he looked like their newborn baby Ami. It was then that they found 60,000 negatives, prints and manuscripts, and the son realized what his mother had done during World War II, an experience he had never told him about. Without this work of preserving Lee Miller’s work, I would never have been able to make the film.
Kate Winslet as Lee Miller
What thoughts can we draw from this film that help us understand the atrocities of today’s wars?
Lee refused to censor the truth, had the visceral courage to testify to it with her Rolleiflex, which she held in front of her heart and allowed her to face the people she was photographing. Her life makes us reflect on the extraordinary courage and incredible importance of war photojournalists, the work they do, their ability to continue to reveal to the rest of the world the truth that otherwise would remain hidden, and often deliberately kept secret. And this kind of work is definitely educational and more important today than ever.
Don’t you consider your work as an actress as important?
It would be impossible to compare the work of actors and actresses with that of people who are exposed to real trauma in their work, whether it is a photographer on the front, a COVID doctor, a neurosurgeon, a pediatric cardiologist, people who literally hold the life of others in their hands. I bow down before them, which is why it was important for me to accept the challenge of making this film, to feel that I was immersed in Lee’s life and I felt the same feelings that she had felt. I wanted Lee Miller not to be simply described as a cover model, lover and muse of surrealist photographer Man Ray. We need to change the way we judge women and define them only in relation to their peers, change the culture to give them the respect they deserve
Lee was released on US cinemas September 27, 2024, on Sky Cinema UK November 1, will be in Italian cinemas March 13, 2025
Published on Voila Facebook December 20, 2024. Read here original Italian text.