Why Kate Winslet Was Firm On Having A Female Director For Lee Miller Film

Kate Winslet was reportedly adamant that her latest film, in which she stars as the photojournalist Lee Miller, should be directed by a woman. The Oscar-winning actress, who not only stars in but also co-produces Lee, released this week, felt strongly about having a female director at the helm. She wanted to capture Miller’s essence as “a truth-seeker and a truth-teller,” highlighting Miller’s sensitive and insightful reporting from the battle of Saint-Malo during World War II, field hospitals in Normandy and the concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald.

Winslet said, “There was no question that it would be a woman who would direct this film,” as noted in production documents, informs The Guardian.

Miller, who passed away in 1977, is remembered for her work as a Vogue model and as the muse and lover of surrealist artist Man Ray in her early years. However, during World War II, she emerged as a pioneering war correspondent and photographer, reporting directly from the front lines. She also famously said, “I’d rather take a picture than be one.”

Winslet chose Ellen Kuras, a longtime collaborator who worked as a cinematographer on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and A Little Chaos, to direct the film. Lee marks Kuras’s feature debut, though she has previously co-directed the Emmy Award-winning documentary The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) about refugees.

Despite Winslet’s five Oscar nominations and her 2009 win for The Reader, it took her over eight years to bring the film about Miller to fruition, reports The Guardian.

Kuras shared with the Observer that some potential investors had been “patronising” and questioned the relevance of a film about Miller, dismissing it as “a woman’s story.” She noted that previous film attempts had often depicted Miller through a male lens, portraying her as a “damaged woman” rather than acknowledging the impact of the war on her.

Kuras said, “The tendency is to see women through men. We’re looking at her as someone who went behind the camera … to take control of the image … create her own story.”

“Lee is a great role model because she wasn’t given the opportunity to become a war correspondent. She went out and found it. She followed her own intuition in the pursuit of telling the truth and the pursuit of justice,” she continued.

The film was released on September 13 and its director, Ellen Kurashas, has already been nominated for the 2024 Audience Award in Feature Fiction.