Kate Winslet plays Iris Simpkins in The Holiday.
Iris is a London-based newspaper columnist who is heartbroken after learning that the man she loves is engaged to someone else. She exchanges homes with Amanda Woods, an American played by Cameron Diaz, through an online house-swap arrangement. Iris travels to Los Angeles, while Amanda spends Christmas in Iris’s English cottage, and both women encounter new romantic possibilities.
Nancy Meyers wrote and directed The Holiday, which was released in 2006. The film also stars Jude Law as Graham, Iris’s romantic interest, and Jack Black as Miles, who becomes close to Amanda. Although the house swap brings the two main characters together structurally, Winslet and Diaz do not play romantic partners; each follows a separate storyline. The film’s two-country setting is one reason its parallel romances remain easy to distinguish from one another.