What Kate did next is a real family affair...

As she makes her directorial debut with Goodbye June, the Oscar-winning star on working with her son, taking inspiration from her mum and how she convinced Helen Mirren to break her 'two film rules'

- Gabrielle Donnelly

Kate with son Joe Anders, who wrote film's screenplay

IF EVER a film were a family effort, it is the upcoming Goodbye June, directed by and starring Kate Winslet, from a script by her son, Joe Anders, and loosely inspired by the story of the death of Joe’s grandmother, Kate’s mother, Sally Bridges-Winslet.

Goodbye June is a sweet and tender family weepie, the story of a fractured family of four squabbling siblings — played by Kate, Andrea Riseborough, Toni Collette and Johnny Flynn who come together to bid farewell to their cancer-ridden mother (Helen Mirren) over the Christmas season.

It delivers a poignant mixture of laughter and tears, along with some more complicated moments that are all too recognisable to anyone who has ever lived in a family.

What is remarkable is that the screenwriter is only 21 years old. Joe Alfie Winslet Mendes — whose father is Kate’s ex-husband, director Sam Mendes — made his feature film debut at the age of 15 with a small part in his father’s much-acclaimed war drama 1917.

At 18, under his new stage name of Anders, he appeared alongside his mother and his half-sister, fellow actor Mia Threapleton, in the Channel 4 television drama I Am Ruth.

A year after that, he starred as a small-town teenager with big dreams of pop stardom in the musical comedy Bonus Track.

And last year he joined the cast of Zoe Kazan’s upcoming television miniseries East of Eden, based on John Steinbeck’s classic novel of the same name. All the while he was acting, he was honing his skills as a writer.

“He’s always written,” says mum Kate, smiling proudly, when we speak over Zoom.

“He’s always been a brilliant writer of poetry. When he was in school he made very meaningful contributions to many creative projects to do with the theatre. So it didn’t surprise me at all that he wanted to get a place at a screenwriting school in London.