Kate Winslet talks about Iris

I hadn't worked for a year when Iris came along - but when you're asked to play the young Judi Dench, you do not say no. Also, I would have been daft to turn such down a brilliant story, a watertight script, and an amazing female role.

I play Iris Murdoch as a young woman. I knew of her, but I wasn't familiar with her novels. That didn't matter, though - because the film is about her life and things that we only now know because of the books by her husband, John Bayley. I read them over and over again, but the most useful for me was a video of interviews that Iris Murdoch gave when she was about 60. These were great, not because I wanted to mimic her voice and how she moved, but because they gave me a sense of her essence.

I dipped into the novels to get a feel for her as a novelist and see if there were common themes. It confirmed things about Iris that I already felt, which is that she loved people, loved things and had a zest for life - and that she was an open person but at the same time had an instinct to preserve her privacy.

Although I didn't collaborate with Judi Dench, when you see us on screen it does feel like we are the same woman. The first time I watched the film, I remember thinking, 'Thank God we pulled it off.' John Bayley has written that he felt as though he was watching Iris again, while my performance contained definite strains of the young woman he knew. That made me cry when I read it. It was better than any review, any award, any nomination, any anything.