Kate Winslet Looks to Make Stage Debut Opposite Bill Nighy

Kate Winslet is exploring the possibibility of making her stage debut opposite Bill Nighy in David Hare's play Skylight, Daily Mail reports. According to Daily Mail, the Oscar-winning actress has already spoken with Hare several times about starring in the play, which Hare would direct.

Nighy would star as Tom Sargeant, a restauranteur who, after his wife dies, runs into a woman he formerly had an affair with. Winslet would play the ex-lover. The original production of the play starred Michael Gambon and Lia Williams and ran on the West End and at the National. The play also has an Olivier award for best play and several Tony Awards for its run on Broadway. If Winslet signed on, the production could go either to Broadway or the West End. The location is undecided.

Winslet made her film debut in Heavenly Creatures (1994), for which she received her first notable critical praise. She achieved recognition for her subsequent work in a supporting role in Sense and Sensibility (1995) and for her leading role in Titanic (1997), the highest grossing film at the time.

Since 2000, Winslet's performances have continued to draw positive comments from film critics, and she has been nominated for various awards for her work in such films as Quills (2000), Iris (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), The Reader (2008) and Revolutionary Road (2008). Her performance in the latter prompted New York Magazine to describe her as "the best English-speaking film actress of her generation."

Winslet's film Titanic is set for an April 4 re-release in theaters, reformatted for 3D. More recent films include 2011's Contagion and Carnage.

David Hare has enjoyed a long and successful life in theater and film. He was a resident dramatist at London’s Royal Court Theater in the early seventies and went on to found The Joint Stock Company in 1975. Since 1984 he has been the Associate Director of The National Theatre. Hare's awards include the BAFTA Award (1979), the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1983), the Berlin Film FestivAl Golden Bear (1985), the Olivier Award (1990), and the London Theatre Critics' Award (1990). He was knighted in 1998. This season he’s been nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay of The Reader (2008) based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink.

A chamber play of surprising force, David Hare’s Skylight captures a cultural rift as powerful and polarizing today as it was when the piece premiered at the National Theater in Great Britain in 1995. On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher Kyra Hollis receives an unexpected visit from her former lover, Tom Sergeant, a successful and charismatic restaurant owner whose wife has just passed away. As the night wears on, the two attempt to rekindle their once passionate relationship only to find themselves locked in a dangerous battle of opposing ideologies and mutual desires.