Kate Winslet, Founder & Director, Golden Hat Foundation

Biography

Kate Winslet is one of the world’s best-known and best-loved actresses who has built a career on a series of film performances which defy type-casting – each one a new and different character, from high drama to comedy to passionate romance to quirky individualism.

She made her film debut at the age of 17 in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures and immediately made her mark.  She won her first Oscar nomination in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, but it was her performance as Rose in Titanic that first brought her to the attention of millions worldwide and delivered her second Oscar nomination.

She won further nominations for her roles in Iris, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Little Children and won Best Actress for her performance as a former Nazi in The Reader in 2009.  She is the youngest actress ever to have received 6 Oscar nominations.  Other memorable and award-winning performances include Revolutionary Road, in which she was re-teamed with Leonardo DiCaprio and director Sam Mendes, Finding Neverland, and Romance and Cigarettes.

In 2010, Kate filmed the lead role in a five-hour HBO television drama, Mildred Pierce, reprising the role once played by Joan Crawford in a film of the same name.  The series will be seen in 2011.   She joins the ensemble cast of Steven Soderbergh’s action thriller Contagion, which will open in 2011.

Kate has two children, Mia and Joe, and divides her time between New York and the UK.

 

Margret Dagmar Ericsdottir, Director, Golden Hat Foundation

Biography

Margret Dagmar Ericsdottir is a Business major with an MBA degree from the Florida Institute of Technology. For years Margret had a very successful career in business and held various executive positions in Icelandic companies.

In 1997 Margret's youngest son Keli was born. Soon after his birth it was apparent that something was not right and Keli was diagnosed as being severely autistic at the age of four. The sudden and profound changes in her family prompted Margret to shift her focus from career-related pursuits to caring for Keli.

Margret has dedicated her time and effort to pursuing different treatments in the hope of bettering the life of her son.  Her determination to help Keli and other families with autistic children led her to make a documentary film about autism.

In 2006 Margret founded Frontier Filmworks, an Icelandic film production company whose goal is to make films that can create a real and lasting difference in our world. Drawing on her experience as a mother of an autistic child, Margret sought out the world´s leading experts on autism, as well as families who, like her own, have children stricken with autism.  The documentary, entitled A Mother’s Courage: Talking Back to Autism (a.k.a The Sunhine Boy) follows her remarkable journey which explores autism and will hopefully help to spread awareness of the syndrome.

Margret and her husband Thorsteinn have three boys: Keli, Unnar and Erik.