New York, December 3, 2008 – 18-year-old actor David Kross is one lucky guy – after a handful of roles in his native Germany, he got to play Kate Winslet’s lover in The Reader.  At the premiere on Wednesday, Kross explained how he and Winslet eased the awkwardness: “We were talking a lot about it, and we had a lot of rehearsals of the other scenes, and we did the sex scenes at the end of the shooting, so we knew each other quite well.” 

While he said that his friends do tease him a bit about the role, he insisted he doesn’t boast about it.  Winslet reminded us that she herself had an older lover at a young age, actor Stephen Tredre, who died in 1997.  Ralph Fiennes plays the young lover as a adult.  “I’m in the film only for the last 20 minutes or so,” Fiennes told us.  So Winslet looked quite a bit different during their scene.  “There’s an age difference, she had to age up,” Fiennes said.  “So when I play my age of 46, Kate had to play 66.”