Kate Winslet reveals her real-life love story

The two stars of ”Titanic” have been mostly incommunicado with the press since their film became mythologically huge last year. The gossip writers have made do without Leonardo DiCaprio’s quotes because they have enough pictures of him cruising New York in search of the perfect nightclub. But Kate Winslet has been far more elusive, staying clear of the United States and out of the public eye completely. Now that she’s finally breaking her silence to talk a bit about her private life, she tells no tales of showbiz hedonism: All you get from Winslet are romantic tales of being a one-man woman.

That one man is Jim Threapleton, an assistant director she met in late 1997 on the set of ”Hideous Kinky,” her new film which opens in New York and Los Angeles this Friday. ”I have to be honest and say it really was love at first sight,” says Winslet, 23, who now has a cropped, modish hairstyle and looks every bit the anti-Rose as she drags on a cigarette. ”When he first showed up on set, my actual reaction was, ‘Oh, no….’ because I saw this wonderful person and knew that something was going to happen.”

Winslet, who married Threapleton last November, later found out that her husband had an equally strong sense of impending romance, which lead to an odd first meeting. ”When my car was approaching the first day, he actually turned his back because he didn’t want me to see the initial reaction on his face,” she says. ”So the first view I had of my husband was his bum and his back… which was nice.”