She revealed how she whisked the tycoon’s 90-year-old mum Eve to safety as a wall of flames threatened to consume them.
Titanic star Kate Winslet has opened up about her dramatic escape from Sir Richard Branson’s Caribbean home as it burned to the ground last week.
The 35-year-old described the inferno as being like a terror movie scene with no one yelling, “cut!”
She revealed how she whisked the tycoon’s 90-year-old mum Eve to safety as a wall of flames threatened to consume them.
The actress said she was woken at 5.15am by smoke at the mansion on Branson’s private Caribbean island of Necker, where she was staying with children Mia, 10, and seven-year-old Joe.
“It happened very fast. Richard’s daughter Holly became head girl immediately. Totally unflappable and utterly practical,” the Mirror quoted Winslet as saying.
“Her calm instructions set the tone for an efficient evacuation and significantly helped to keep the hysteria under control. Flames were licking towards us. On realising just how fast the flames were gaining on us, I picked up a defiant and very able Eve.
“God bless this stoic woman, she didn’t want to be carried. For the record Eve could absolutely have made it out on two feet but I had seen something that the others in my group hadn’t, which was the wall of flames heading rapidly our way. I just knew we had to go fast and I didn’t want to alarm my children any more than they already were.
“I know it sounds like a dramatic chapter in a novel or a movie, but nobody was about to shout, ‘Cut!’” she recalled.
The Branson family, along with Winslet, her children and boyfriend Louis Dowler, then retreated to a safe distance and watched the blaze destroy the business magnate’s home.
“I’m just glad everyone is safe. This easily could not have been the case,” the actress added.
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