The actor has delved into her past for the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? and discovered there is nothing at all posh about her background

Why Kate Winslet is happy to be descended from poor immigrants

Name: Kate Winslet.

Age: 43.

All right. At least I know what she looks looks like. Good. Remember she’s just an ordinary, down-to-earth, seven times Oscar-nominated mum.

And a multimillionaire? Yes, I expect so, although she doesn’t like to make a big thing out of it. She lives in Sussex, does the school run, brings homemade biscuits to interviews.

Didn’t she win an Oscar too? Yes, that’s right, for The Reader, in 2009. “Waitrose, Oscars. It really is that bonkers,” she has said. “Honestly, I push my shopping trolley past the aisles of gossip magazines and I often just go: ‘Who the fuck are all these people and what the fuck are they doing?’” She’s one of us.

I thought she was quite posh. Why’s that?

She sounds posh. And English actors always are, aren’t they? Unless they’re, say, Sean Bean or Ray Winstone. That might be a slight generalisation. And it doesn’t apply to Winslet anyway. Her parents were both impoverished actors. She grew up in Reading with very little money, and her ancestors were destitute.

How do you know that? She has just found out, on that Who Do You Think You Are? show. Her great-great-grandfather came to the UK from Sweden in 1884, which “basically means I’m an immigrant”, she says.

One-sixteenth immigrant, at any rate. Going further back, her great-great-great-great-grandfather, Anders Jonsson, was jailed for stealing potatoes and honey to feed his family.

Obviously that’s sad. Yes.

But I mean we all have 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents, give or take a bit of overlapping. Wouldn’t most people have at least one peasant on the list? Why must you take the fun out of everything?

I’m not trying to. It’s just that almost everyone was poor in the early 19th century, so if you go back far enough … You’re missing the point. This stuff can completely transform someone’s idea of themselves. Remember Danny Dyer?

The Geezer Laureate? That’s him. When he had his turn on the programme he discovered a direct line of descent from King Edward III, who was his “22-times-great-grandfather”.

Were there any other interesting names among the millions of other ancestors from that generation? You can scoff, but it was a very moving moment for the “kid from Canning Town”, and Winslet’s discovery meant a lot to her, too.

Really? Her parents “would have been upset and disgusted if I had come from wealth or royalty”, she said.

Yes. Much better to end up there, ideally. Indeed.

Do say: “Kate Winslet will be horrified when she finds out she’s descended from Richard II.”

Don’t say: “Never mind. At least she’s a cousin of Danny Dyer.”