Hollywood Hits

Kate won a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance in the movie version of one of Oprah's favorite books—and book club selection—The Reader. She stars as Hanna, a woman in post-World War II Germany who has an affair with a 15-year-old boy. "It's provocative, gripping, captivating," Oprah says. "Everything moviegoers are looking for."

Though part of the movie is set in the aftermath of World War II, Kate says The Reader is not just a Holocaust movie. "For me, it was always an incredibly powerful love story between a young man and a woman twice his age," she says. "It's about how they don't choose to fall in love with each other and how you can't choose who you fall in love with."

Kate says the experience of making the film was initially overwhelming. "With Hanna, when I first read the script I was absolutely terrified," she says. "I thought, 'Well, I don't know what I have to bring to her. I cannot compare her life to my life in any way at all.' And that, I knew, would be the ultimate challenge."