Kate Winslet Tested Her ‘Flirtatious’ Accent for The Regime by Leaving Voicemails for Show

Every actor has a process for diving into their roles, but for Kate Winslet, it meant leaving voicemails for one of the The Regime's executive producers in character.

During The Regime FYC panel event in Los Angeles on June 5, the actress, 48, discussed the process of coming up with her character's unique voice and accent. In the show, which also stars Matthias Schoenaerts, Guillaume Gallienne, Andrea Riseborough, Martha Plimpton and Hugh Grant. Winslet plays Chancellor Elena Vernham, the corrupt authoritarian ruler of a fictional European country whose controversial decisions incite a civil war.

"It never made sense to me to speak like myself," she said, adding, "I didn't quite know what that meant, or what I was going to do about it. I just knew that I had to find something that didn't feel too close to me."

While the Oscar-winning actress experimented with the accent at home in the kitchen — a move that elicited feedback from her family like, "Don't do that. It's actually made my ears bleed," she recalled — Winslet also left voicemails with executive producer and director Jessica Hobbs as Chancellor Vernham. For Winslet, it was a way of working up the courage to eventually try out the voice on executive producer and director Stephen Frears, who had previously directed films like the 2006 biodrama The Queen, the 2000 dramedy High Fidelity and 1988's Dangerous Liaisons.