KATE Winslet wants to make one thing clear - enjoy isn't the word she'd use to describe doing the love scenes in her new movie, Little Children. She and co-star Patrick Wilson get to grips in several physical and explicit sex scenes in the film. "I wouldn't say that either of us necessarily enjoyed it. I do feel the need to correct you there because I don't want to run the risk of being misquoted," says the British actress.

No, she continues, performing such scenes doesn't get any easier. "Every time that I shoot a nude scene or a love scene, I always find myself saying that's it now, I'm not going to do this again because it's really difficult and it's really, really scary. And I'm not quite sure how much longer I can get away with it, anyway," she says.

In any case, those sexually-charged scenes weren't the most difficult ones in Little Children. "The hardest were the more emotional ones, or the more revealing ones about the character when you're so concerned about being as honest as you can and really get it right," she says.

"So, yes it's tough, it's totally and utterly tough. But we try to kind of laugh about it because you sort of have to, the situation is so completely ridiculous."

More importantly, co-star Wilson, director Todd Field and Winslet were very concerned to ensure the performances in the love scenes - with regard to the acting and the saying of the lines - were right. "The point is that through the intimacy of those scenes, who these people are as individuals is not only revealed to each other but also to themselves. My character, Sarah, really comes out of herself and changes as a result of being in that physical position where she's feeling something that she's never felt before. It completely changes who she is and it changes who Brad is too. I couldn't have imagined turning around to Todd and saying, 'now about this nudity...'."

Winslet not only starred in the biggest grossing motion picture of all time - Titanic - but has established herself as an Oscar-nominated leading lady on both sides of the Atlantic, happily mixing quirky, low budget movies such as Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and big budget mainstream films.

She's been doing it a long time. Coming from a family of actors, she began performing for British TV at 13, making her first impression on the big screen in Heavenly Creatures when she was only 17. Some might perceive her as something of a workaholic with no less than four films due for release in coming months. But she's insistent that she puts family life before everything. Married to director Sam Mendes, she has two children - Mia, her six-year-old daughter from her first marriage to James Threapleton, and Joe, nearly three, with Mendes.

The films coming out were made over the past three years and just happen to be being released together. "I'm not a workaholic, I'm a home-aholic," she protests, adding that she's actually taking a year off at the moment.

"I ordinarily do one film a year and the rest of the time I'm at home with the kids. Even when I'm working I'm still basically at home and with the kids. I've never left them to go to work. The only time I did have to leave them was when we were shooting All The King's Men in New Orleans.

"We had about four days of shooting in an area where there were literally alligators climbing out of the bayou and sitting in the garden. I'm sorry, but I don't know a single parent who would willingly take their children to that place.

"So they were in LA with Sam at that particular time. Other than that, we've always gone everywhere together. This notion that busy actresses somehow just swan around and leave their children for two months while they go and pursue their acting career is, quite honestly, not actually true. I certainly have never met an actress who has done that.

"Joe's nearly three and this is what I've been doing for the first part of his life with big gaps in between. It's just that, all of a sudden, everything's coming out now. As an actress, you have absolutely no say about that, or any control."

She had no hesitation taking the role of Sarah in Little Children after meeting director Todd Field to discuss it. "He was very, very specific about why he thought that I could play that part in really minute detail, to the point where I thought 'God, I feel good about myself now, of course I could play this part'," she recalls.

It was a big decision to play someone like Sarah because she's an American woman and nothing like Winslet. The only similarity is that they're both parents.

"The biggest challenge was playing somebody who wasn't a good mother, that was very hard," says Winslet. "It's not that she's violent or shouts or is incredibly aggressive or anything like that. It's just that she's so inept at it. She doesn't know how to be a parent, what to do with this small child.

"Of course, she loves her but there's something to Sarah that's rather inconvenient about this little girl. She sort of gets in Sarah's way a bit. One of Sarah's great weaknesses is that when she had this child, she somehow felt that she was losing a part of herself.

"Obviously, for the majority of parents, you gain a million worlds when you have a child. Certainly, it's the thing that's changed my life and made me unbelievably happy.

"But Sarah somehow resented the presence of this little girl."

Sarah feels isolated and trapped in surburbia, a situation with which Winslet has some experience. She tells how, in her first marriage, she and her husband moved to Surrey. "It's actually something that he and I now say 'what on earth were we doing? Why did we do that?'," she admits.

"It was a perfectly nice house but there's something about making a decision to move out of the city, or move away from an area that you're used to, that somehow this feeling of 'is this it?' surfaces. I was in a situation where Jim and I both felt the same thing and in actual fact, while we were still married, we moved back into London.

"It was very clear, very, very quickly that 'oh no, we're too young to have done this'. But I do know women who've moved out of bigger cities into areas near the countryside or more suburban areas. I remember I asked one friend 'so how is it now that you've moved?'. And she said 'it's a choice'. For her it was a choice and actually she was very, very happy with it."

Little Children has been generating talk of possible Oscar nominations, and Winslet doesn't reckon her chances have been spoiled by appearing in an episode of the BBCTV comedy Extras taking the mickey out of the prize-giving event.

"Extras was a real lot of fun but that was Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's perception of what they feel the Academy Awards to be," says Winslet.

"I'm incredibly proud to have been nominated in the past. It really means a lot to me because I do work very hard when I'm making a film and really do absolutely give my all.

"To get that kind of pat on the back, it's really amazing and also never something I anticipated would possibly happen to me, ever. So I'm very, very proud to have been there before.

"And, you know, the nice thing about nominations is that, same as awards, no one can actually take them away from you and I'm proud of that."

Little Children (15) opens in cinemas on Friday.