FINDING KATE WINSLET 'NEVERLAND' PROVES ACTRESS IS AN INSPIRATION, IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Four rambunctious boys. Johnny Depp at the height of his cuddly/goofy appeal. Pirates, fairies and a ticking crocodile, too.

We wouldn't dare doubt that Kate Winslet would let any or all of the cinematic circus that is ``Finding Neverland'' overwhelm her. The actress who most famously held onto the heart of ``Titanic'' while the big ship sank is again the center of gravity in this fanciful look at the creation of ``Peter Pan.''

She plays Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the widowed mother of four boys who inspired Scottish playwright James M. Barrie (Depp) to create Pan and the Lost Boys 100 years ago. And although the film is more concerned with the making of the stage perennial than the actual story of Barrie and Sylvia, Winslet's powerful presence provides a very real core for a movie monument to the power of make-believe.

``I chose Kate, first, because she's a mother herself,'' says director Marc Forster, who last time out steered Halle Berry to a best actress Oscar for ``Monster's Ball.''

``And she has this incredible passion for character work, and for life. You can get carried a bit away by it; she gets you excited that she's part of it, and you want her to be part of it. Suddenly, you can't think about anyone else anymore. It's so infectious, it's like she grabs you and you feel like flying.''

Like Peter Pan, perhaps? Winslet says that her fervent belief in the project triggered that enthusiasm.

``The film is very much about remembering the child in all of us, and the importance of the imagination,'' says Winslet, who has a 1-year-old son with her husband, ``American Beauty'' director Sam Mendes, and a 4-year-old daughter from her previous marriage. ``That's very important in my everyday life, to keep my children's imaginations alive and to remain as imaginative as possible myself, so it all doesn't become about computer games and watching TV and all of that stuff.

``So the message of the movie is one that's very close to my own life anyway,'' adds Winslet, who comes from an acting family and played Wendy in a stage production of ``Pan'' when she was 15. ``And staying in touch with your imagination is a very important message.''

Some of Winslet's best work has been built around that theme, from her first major film role as a hysterical teenage murderess in Peter Jackson's 1994 ``Heavenly Creatures'' to this year's surreal dissection of love and memory, ``Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.''

But ``Neverland's'' greatest challenge was to keep things real, from the delicate nature of its Barrie-Sylvia relationship to the playing out of Sylvia's unhappy fate. The movie takes liberties with the actual circumstances. When Barrie meets Sylvia and her boys (of which there were really five), her husband has already passed away, when in truth he didn't die until after ``Peter Pan'' was completed. After that, the by-then-divorced Barrie intended to marry Sylvia, but in the movie their relationship remains platonic until her own untimely death.

``This film is a love story, but it isn't a conventional love story because there's no kiss, no clinch, no love scene; there are none of those obvious moments,'' Winslet notes. ``And it's a love story between a whole family and one man. I always really liked that. The reality is that there was a romantic attachment between Sylvia and Barrie. But as it is in the movie, I think you know that they love each other.

``If there had been a kiss or one of those moments between Johnny Depp and myself, the movie would have immediately become about something else entirely. It would have taken away from the important parts of the story, which are how inspired J.M. Barrie was by Sylvia's boys and by Sylvia.''

Even more daunting was charting the decline of Sylvia's health, which she fiercely fought against acknowledging for both her children's sake and out of fear of what she'd seen her husband go through.

``The most outstanding challenge for me was finding the right balance when Sylvia became quite ill toward the end of the film,'' Winslet reveals. ``It would have been very easy to play every single scene in floods and floods of tears. But I find it very boring to watch ...

``So I had to find ways of displaying her grief and yet remembering what other things she would be feeling. The thing I settled on was that here was a woman who would have been frightened but, also, incredibly angry that this was happening to her.''

Hmm. Slow death. No lovin'. Doesn't make ``Finding Neverland'' sound like a very fun movie, does it? But it very often is, especially when Depp and Winslet are horsing around with the four young British actors who play the Llewelyn Davies boys.

``They were so much fun, those boys,'' Winslet says. ``They were all absolutely adorable, but very professional. ... And Johnny was the biggest kid of all,'' she confirms, to no one's surprise. ``He is very, very playful. He does have a very childlike spirit, all of which worked really, really well for the character that he was playing. At the end of the day, he's a parent, I'm a parent, and when you are a parent, you have to get back in touch with the child in you in order to interact with your own kids. So it really helped the spirit of the film that we weren't afraid to run around like idiots with the boys.''

Although Depp is receiving the lion's share of early awards buzz at the moment, Winslet - thrice Oscar-nominated for ``Sense and Sensibility,'' ``Titanic'' and ``Iris'' - is being mentioned more and more for year-end honors, too. And not just for ``Neverland.'' Her work as Clementine, Jim Carrey's screwed-up love object in ``Eternal Sunshine,'' is also considered one of the finest performances of 2004.

``I'm blessed to have two films out there this year in which I play completely different characters,'' she reckons. ``All an actor can hope to do is play different parts and come up with a good delivery.''

Next up is a remake of the Louisiana political classic ``All the King's Men'' with Sean Penn, Meryl Streep and Jude Law. She's also completed a musical, ``Romance & Cigarettes,'' directed by John Turturro.

As for ever working with her acclaimed husband, it won't be anytime soon. Mendes is about to start filming ``Jarhead,'' an adaptation of the best-selling memoir from Gulf War veteran Anthony Swofford.

``No, it's a boys' movie,'' she laughs when asked if ``Jarhead'' has a role for her. Considering how sturdily she got through ``Neverland,'' we'd suggest that she might fit right in.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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(1 -- cover -- color) Kate Winslet is passionate about `Neverland' Theo Wargo/WireImage.com (2) ``This film is a love story, but it isn't a conventional love story,'' says Kate Winslet of ``Finding Neverland,'' in which she co-stars with Johnny Depp. ``It's a love story between a whole family and one man.''