Kate Winslet and Husband Edward Abel Smith (a.k.a. Ned Rocknroll)’s Relationship Timeline

Kate Winslet is confident she found The One in husband Edward Abel Smith, formerly known as Ned Rocknroll.

The Oscar winner was previously married Jim Threapleton from 1998 to 2001, welcoming daughter Mia in 2000. Following their split, she met director Sam Mendes and they wed in 2003. That same year, she gave birth to their son, Joe. The duo announced their separation in 2010 and finalized their divorce in 2011.

“I know lots of people who are not in the public eye who have gone through several marriages, I really do. And it’s just those are the cards that life dealt me. I didn’t plan on its being that way. And f—k me, it hasn’t been easy, you know,” Winslet told WSJ Magazine in 2015. “No one really knows what has happened in my life. No one really knows why my first marriage didn’t last; no one knows why my second didn’t. And I’m proud of those silences.”

While vacationing at Sir Richard Branson‘s estate on Necker Island in 2011, Winslet met Smith, who was still going by Ned Rocknroll at the time. He proposed during the summer of 2012 and they tied the knot that December.

“I can confirm that Kate Winslet married Ned Rocknroll in NY earlier this month in a private ceremony attended by her two children and a very few friends and family,” her rep told Us Weekly in December 2012. “The couple had been engaged since the summer.”

“So his birth name is Abel Smith. And as time went by and Ned became Ned — who is quite an original personality — he just decided at one point in his life to just change his name to Rocknroll. Ned Rocknroll. So when I met him, his name was Ned Rocknroll. This is completely true,” she told Jimmy Kimmel in January 2021. “When he changed his name to Rocknroll, I don’t think he had anticipated what might happen if he should have a girlfriend whose name was Kate Winslet and who was quite well-known and therefore the press might kind of not react so well to the fact that she had this boyfriend called then Rocknroll. So, it was a little tricky.”

That same year, Winslet gushed about their romance after giving her husband a shout-out in her acceptance speech at the 2021 Emmys.

“When I was here 10 years ago with Mildred Pierce we had actually just met. I knew that I was going to spend my life with this man,” the Mare of Easttown star told reporters backstage. “We’re getting to the Emmys and I was just so in a whirlwind of having just met him that I couldn’t even concentrate and I vividly remember making an absolutely appalling speech because I was not on planet earth because I had fallen head over heels in love with this person who I just met. So to have him here, it’s really quite special.”

Scroll through for their complete relationship timeline:

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Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

2017

While promoting her 2017 film The Mountain Between Us, which also starred Idris Elba, Winslet gave insight into her marriage when she compared her real-life love story to the movie.

"One thing that I always loved about the story is that they go through this experience thinking that they’re one person and come out of it someone else entirely,” she explained during a press panel. “They can never quite go back to what life once was. I think that’s a perfectly possible thing that can happen to people. I’ve seen it happen. I mean, when I met my husband, Ned, I felt that’s what happened to me, to be honest. I just knew it wasn’t going to be the way it had been before. It was something else now.”

 

Credit: Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

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2019

Reports surfaced in 2019 that Rocknroll changed his name back to his birth name. Two years later, Winslet confirmed the news during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

"I got to the point where I'm like, you know, I'm filling in doctors' forms and it says ' mother's name' and 'father's name', and I'm like, 'Honey … are we going to keep going?'" she said in January 2021. "And he's like, 'Yeah, you're right. I'll just change it back.' So, he changed it back."