What if…actress Kate Winslet became a singer?
Sometimes actors sing and sometimes singers act. British actress Kate Winslet falls into the former category. She made her debut in the film ‘Heavenly Creatures’ in 1994 and three years later was left floating on a bit of wood in the freezing Atlantic ocean while she plucked her boyfriend’s fingers off and let him sink beneath her. Following appearances in ‘Hideous Kinky’ (1998), the WW2 drama ‘Enigma’ (2001) and her Oscar nominated performance in ‘Iris’, Kate voiced the role of Belle in the animated version of ‘Christmas Carol: The Movie’, later on that same year. Not content with that, Winslet also turned her hand to singing, and rather well as it would turn out. Hit songwriter Steve Mac, who had been one-third of British group Undercover in the early 1990’s, together with Wayne Hector (Damage, Westlife) wrote the song “What If…” for the movie and, as it fell to the character of Belle to perform it, Kate decided to have a go at it.
Her vocal ability was more than credible and one could be forgiven for thinking they had hired a professional singer for the job. This leaked to the press in late November 2001 and immediately attention focused on Kate being a contender for the Christmas number one that year. At a cost of £6m, the film was not met with great critical adulation and in the end, was released straight to video and DVD, bypassing the cinema. Happily, the same was not accorded the song, which would peak at No.6 in her home country, where it holds a Silver certification for sales of more than 200,000 copies. “What If…” was even more successful outside the UK where it charted top ten in twelve countries and went all the way to No.1 in Austria, Belgium and Ireland! So what happened? Why have we not heard more from the lovely Miss Kate since? Well, that’s for her to answer. But what a pity that she did not give us at least a whole album of material…
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