Kate Winslet says daughter Mia Threapleton has become actor on own merit by not using her name

Watch: Kate Winslet's daughter is acting without using her mother's name

Kate Winslet has expressed her pride that her daughter Mia Threapleton has become an actor without using her famous surname.

The 45-year-old Titanic star revealed her eldest daughter – from her first marriage to film director Jim Threapleton – is acting under her father's name and has managed to get cast without relying on the influence of her famous mother.

Winslet told ITV's Lorraine: "What’s great for her is she has a different surname so she slipped under the radar and the people who cast her didn’t know she was my daughter and that was important for her self-esteem of course."

The star of new HBO crime drama Mare Of Easttown said she had always suspected daughter Mia might want to follow in her footsteps.

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Winslet revealed: "Mia is 20 and acting. She’s away now in the Czech Republic about to start on a TV series over there.

"I think I knew it was coming, I always suspected...

"And then a few years ago she turned around and said, I’d like to give it a go..."

Mia Threapleton had a minor role in Winslet's 2014 period film A Little Chaos, directed and co-starring the late Alan Rickman.

The young actress starred in thriller Shadows last year, filmed in Ireland by Italian director Carlo Lavagna, about two teenage sisters living in the woods following a catastrophic event.

Mia said previously: "Shadows was the first film I’d received an audition for, and the first script I had ever been given to read. I couldn’t believe my luck. I read it and didn’t put it down - which is admitting a lot because I’m dyslexic and that means I have to read slowly and steadily to be able to absorb things fully sometimes."

And she revealed she had not spent much time on film sets growing up.

She said: "I never actually spent much time around sets that my mum was working on... It was always a special treat. It’s a very different experience when it is happening to you, and not just something I was getting to observe from time to time...

"I really understand why my mum has always impressed on us how hard the work is. She is right! And I loved every second of it."

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Winslet met Jim Threapleton when he worked as assistant director on her 1998 film Hideous Kinky. They married in 2008 and welcomed daughter Mia in 2000, before divorcing in 2001.

The Reader star married director Sam Mendes in 2003 and the couple have a 17-year-old son Joe. They split in 2011.

She is now married to Virgin business magnate Richard Branson's nephew Edward Abel Smith, formerly known as Ned Rocknroll. They share a seven-year-old son Bear.

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