In 1996, Kate Winslet starred in both Jude and Hamlet. In Michael Winterbottom's Jude, based on the Victorian novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, she played Sue Bridehead, a young woman with suffragette leanings who falls in love with her cousin, played by Christopher Eccleston. Acclaimed among critics, it was not a success at the box office, barely grossing US$2 million ($2.8 million) worldwide. Richard Corliss of Time magazine said "Winslet is worthy of the camera's scrupulous adoration. She's perfect, a modernist ahead of her time and Jude is a handsome showcase for her gifts." Winslet played Ophelia, Hamlet's drowned lover, in Kenneth Branagh's all star-cast film version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The film garnered largely positive reviews and earned Kate Winslet her second Empire Award.
