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Kate Winslet has been nominated for acting Academy Awards more than half a dozen times. She broke Bette Davis’ record of nabbing five noms by her 31st birthday—something the former didn’t achieve until 33. Her sixth nomination comes for Steve Jobs (2015), the Danny Boyle-directed semi-biopic of the iconic Apple co-founder, in which she plays Joanna Hoffman, a marketing executive who served on the original Apple Macintosh and NeXT computer teams. Hoffman wasn’t a household name before Boyle, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and Winslet brought her to the big screen, but her significance in Apple’s history—and Jobs’ life—was immense.

To prepare for the role, Winslet said she was more interested in learning Hoffman’s backstory and what drove her as a powerful woman in a man’s world than she was concerned with perfecting an imitation of the woman. The film, while based on Walter Isaacson’s biographical book, is more about depicting the spirit of Apple’s success and ongoing legacy and less about exacting factual perfection. Its characters are characterized versions of their subjects, drawn by Boyle, Sorkin and the actors.

Winslet met Hoffman to learn about her, understand her and get an idea of the world she inhabited as well as her place within that world and her relationship with Jobs. “I loved spending time with her because she shared stories with me about her time with Steve and her relationship with Steve that a lot of people just don’t know anything about,” Winslet told EW. “And I actually came to understand a much softer, gentler side of Steve Jobs, a side of Steve Jobs who I think was kept sort of hidden away and private to those people or to his family.”

An English actress, Winslet worked with a dialect coach to master Hoffman’s Polish accent, in addition to studying personal recordings of Hoffman’s speech. Hoffman was born in Warsaw and raised between Poland and the Soviet Union. The daughter of Academy Award-winning Polish filmmaker Jerzy Hoffman, Joanna was raised largely by her mother after she became estranged from her father due to the collapse of her parents’ marriage. She moved to New York as a teenager and quickly learned English, excelling academically before studying at MIT and eventually working with Apple.

“Joanna wasn’t just a hotheaded Eastern European woman screeching at Jobs,’ Winslet told Deadline. “She was a sister, his friend, and a little bit of a mother. Her recognition of who he was as a person and her acceptance and love of him, warts and all, was an admirable quality.” That is the spirit and essence Winslet wanted to convey with her performance in the film. Hoffman may be known as the ballsy executive with the confidence to stand up to one of the most intimidating figures in technology, but she did so from a place of love and fondness.

This is also what Hoffman wanted the film, and Winslet’s performance, to say about her work relationship with Jobs. At a panel in Palo Alto, Hoffman said, “What was important to me was that [the Jobs filmmakers] conveyed the tone of my working relationship with Steve… Originally, the character was much more subordinate. I’ve never been anyone’s work wife. And if I could impart that on to [Winslet], she would be an ally in that.”

The performance seems to have achieved its goal. Winslet was nominated for a number of major awards for her portrayal of Hoffman, and Hoffman said she “couldn’t complain” about the job Kate did.