Kate Winslet felt a profound connection to her role as the real-life World War Two photographer Elizabeth “Lee” Miller in the film 'Lee.' "I discovered many parallels between myself and her, particularly in terms of the determination she possessed and her ability to keep pushing forward without accepting 'no' as an answer," said Winslet, who co-produced the film. The 'Titanic' actor reminisced about a moment during the film's development when she sat at her kitchen table, tears streaming down her face, questioning whether she could truly embody Miller on screen. However, each moment of doubt only brought her closer to the photojournalist. "I would ask myself, 'What would Lee do?'" she added during a Zoom interview. 'Lee' is currently screening in UAE cinemas.

Miller, an American model in New York, transitioned from posing in front of the camera to capturing the war for Vogue magazine. She documented the Blitz, the 1940s German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, nurses at an army base in Oxford, and even one of the earliest depictions of the military using napalm. Her powerful images of the war and the aftermath of the concentration camps, combined with her groundbreaking role as a female war correspondent, eventually cemented Miller's place in history after her work was rediscovered after being forgotten for some time. Winslet noted that without Miller's son, Antony Penrose, the late photographer's work might have remained unknown. "He ventured into the attic of Farleys House, where she lived and died, and discovered 60,000 negatives and prints that she had stored in old Heinz baked beans and Daz cardboard boxes, hidden away in an effort to forget," she said. "Like many people who experienced trauma after the war, they just wanted to put it behind them and never speak of it again," she added. Penrose wrote a biography titled 'The Lives of Lee Miller' in 1985, which served as the basis for the film 'Lee.'

"In those moments when I thought, 'Oh, my God, I can't do this,' I would remind myself, 'I have to do it for Tony. I just have to keep going for Tony,'" Winslet said. "He has this film made during his lifetime, and he's 78 now. I've done it. So, I feel incredibly happy for him, and I do feel very proud of myself," she added.