Kate Winslet is set to play Polish-Armenian Joanna Hoffman — one of Apple’s earliest employees who was known for standing up to Steve Jobs — in the new movie about the legendary Apple cofounder’s life.
The movie, which includes a star-studded cast that features Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, is set to debut on Oct. 9, according to Business Insider.Â
In a recent interview with , Winslet explained how she landed the role. The actress was interested in the role as soon as she heard about the film from her hair-and-makeup artist, who was set to work on the movie after she had finished working with Winslet on “The Dressmaker.” The fact that the film was written by Andrew Sorkin was enough to draw Winslet in, but she was also intrigued by the movie’s three-act format.
Winslet decided to move on the opportunity right away, but there was one hurdle: she looks nothing like Hoffman, the Polish-Armenian immigrant that served as the only marketing person on the original Mac team for more than a year.
So, to audition for the role, she sent her husband out to purchase dark brown wigs in varying lengths. She took photos of herself in the wigs and sent them over to Scott Rudin, the film’s producer.
“I  wanted to please her [Joanna Hoffman] as much as I could. How she sounds, and her accent, is fairly complicated. She grew up largely in Armenia, spent some time in Poland, and has Russians in her family, so she has all three accents, but she’s been in America since she was a teenager, so she had American rhythms,” Winslet said.
