Ah, Kate: actress, mother and, let’s be honest, glamazon.

At least so say Glamour readers, who have voted her to the very top of the 50 Most Glam list a whopping three years running. “Kate is sophistication and class all the way,” posted jaellis on glamour.com. And from knwilson: “Why do I feel like I know her on a personal level? I can’t get enough!” So what does the Oscar winner think of the flattery? “I mean, come on!” she says, laughing. “Sophia Loren is glamorous. I don’t know how to do my hair.”

But that’s exactly why we all love her. Red carpet aside, the world can sense a real woman in there. Ever since her star-making love scenes in Titanic, Winslet, 35, has enjoyed defusing the mythology of Hollywood glamour, talking openly about her implant-free breasts and her refusal to starve herself. She also takes movie roles that are complicated—and often not particularly pretty. Consider her last two performances, in 2008: There was Revolutionary Road’s anguished, raging housewife, and Hanna Schmitz, the illiterate former concentration camp guard in The Reader, for which she won her best actress Oscar. This month Winslet again proves her mettle, as star of the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce. Playing a Depression-era single mother, she appears in every single scene of the five-hour series and is, by turns, repressed, restless, selfish, self-destructive and admirably determined. Who says glamour is all surface?

As for life away from the camera, Winslet, who is mother to Mia, 10, and Joe, 7, is the portrait of English reserve, revealing almost nothing to the media. But she recently had to deal with her own very public drama: In March 2010 she and her husband of nearly seven years, director Sam Mendes, announced their separation. So how is life now? Over coffee at a tiny Manhattan café, Winslet opened up.

GLAMOUR: Here you are, playing a character who is described in James M. Cain’s novel as “fat and getting a little shapeless,” a woman who has “lost everything she had worked for.” For God’s sake, what’s the deal with your love of playing these angst-ridden women?

KATE WINSLET: [Laughs.] It’s my chance to challenge myself to the fullest, which is one of the great joys about this job…. I love it when a character requires me to look less than my red-carpet best. It’s more fun playing a character that requires you to look like dog s—t.

GLAMOUR: Dog what?

KATE WINSLET: I’ve never understood the notion that actors and actresses should look great on-screen just because they’re on-screen. That doesn’t make sense to me.

GLAMOUR: Which is ironic, because you have been voted Most Glamorous three years in a row by Glamour magazine’s readers.