"Oscar-winning actress Kate Rocknoll" just doesn't sound quite right, anyway. Kate Winslet is proud to be the wife of Ned Rocknroll; she wed Richard Branson's nephew in secret last December, and is now pregnant with their first child together. But the Labor Day star, 37, is going to keep her now-famous last name, she confirmed in an interview with British newspaper The Telegraph.
"I was never going to change my name to Rocknroll," Winslet says. "I've never changed my name to anything so I didn’t see a reason to start now." Indeed, the Mildred Pierce star has been married twice before — to British directors Jim Threapleton and Sam Mendes — and apparently did not take either of their names, either. (Ned, 34, was legally born Ned Abel Smith, but legally changed his name to "Ned Rocknroll" several years back.)
"I quite like Kate Winslet; in fact I think it's very flashy," she continued. "I'm proud of my name because I'm one of three girls and we have one boy in our family so essentially the only person who is going to carry the name along is my brother and he doesn't have any children at the moment." Winslet's baby-to-be will join half-siblings Mia, 12, and Joe, 9, her kids from her two previous unions.
"My parents have been very happily married for well over 40 years now, so to have grown up with that level of togetherness in the home was definitely something that was important to me and I'm sure I still carry that," added the pregnant star. Right now, she gushed, she's feeling "really happy . . . things are wonderful."
