How Ned Rocknroll Wooed Kate Winslet

When news surfaced that Kate Winslet married Ned Rocknroll, it seemed much too bizarre to be true — mostly because his name is Ned Rocknroll.

Let’s also note that Kate Winslet has an Oscar. And we also might add that she is a cultural institution who starred in the Academy Award-winning mega-blockbuster Titanic alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, who reportedly walked her down the aisle earlier this month during her super-secret Rocknroll wedding. Yes, that happened.

While we digest this information, here’s some extra intel on how Rocknroll wooed Winslet and more on the man behind the Brit-hippie moniker:

1. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. And his name really isn’t Ned Rocknroll. It is Ned Abel Smith, and according to Atlantic Wire, citing an interview Rocknroll’s ex-wife Eliza Pearson gave to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, he “made that title up himself” and legalized it in ’08. “It was hysterical. We had discussed him doing this many times before, but I wasn’t sure whether he’d do it. The whole thing was about having fun with your name. He thought we all took ourselves too seriously so it was about reacting against it,” quoth Pearson. 

STORY: ‘Titanic 3D London Premiere Features Kate Winslet, James Cameron

2. He has a high-powered yet fun job, like Tom Hanks in Big. At Virgin Galactic, the space-travel arm of the Virgin empire, he’s the “Head of Marketing Promotion and Astronaut Experience.” He also made up that title himself. Of course, the 34-year-old’s high-level, fantasy position has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that his gazillionaire uncle Richard Branson founded the company.

3. He is apparently sexier than a Burberry model. After Winslet traded the dapper Louis Dowler (said Burberry model whom she dated after divorcing Sam Mendes) in order to date Rocknroll last year, Dowler publicly licked his wounds with a bitter interview in the Britloid the London Evening Standard, saying: “I don’t think Kate behaved well and it is still very raw for me. I was in love with her and you can’t switch that off overnight.” 

4. He’s got her kids’ seal of approval. Nearly a year and a half after they met while vacationing on Branson’s Necker Island paradise (recall: the devastating fire where Winslet saved the mogul’s 90-year-old mother), Rocknroll is seemingly on excellent terms with her son, Joe, 9, from her marriage to Mendes and daughter, Mia, 12, whom she had with first husband, director Jim Threapleton. As aforementioned, the two attended the Winslet-Rocknroll nuptials and E! News notes they were introduced to the shaggy-haired exec just weeks after their mother met him circa August 2011.

5. He is the new Adam Shulman. By which we refer to Anne Hathaway‘s jewelry-designer husband, who with all due respect, was not remotely famous when the Les Miserables star met him four years ago. (Cue the recent joke on 30 Rock mashing up their names as “Anne Hath-Nobody!”). Sometimes Oscar-collecting leading ladies prefer to date a guy from outside the business (who isn’t threatened by all those awards on the mantle).

Twitter: @ErinLCarlson

Email: erin.carlson@thr.com