Faces to Watch in ’96 : The Year’s in Their Hands : Well, maybe not just theirs (notice we don’t list Jim Carrey). But these artists and entertainers--some you know, some you don’t--are most likely to make some kind of splash in ’96. Ready? Everybody into the pool. : MOVIES : Kate Winslet

Kate Winslet first won attention for her performance as a murderous schoolgirl in 1994’s “Heavenly Creatures,” her first film. “It was traumatic,” she recalls, saying that the more she knew about her true-life character, the more she became like her. “Wanting to kill someone . . . I just lost control of who I was at the end of the day.”

No such problems in “Sense and Sensibility,” for which she received a Golden Globe best supporting actress nomination for her role as Marianne, a young woman obsessed with romance. “I wanted to kiss everybody!” she exults.

Winslet, 20, credits co-star and screenwriter Emma Thompson with giving her valuable advice. “One thing I’ve learned from Emma was not to take everything too seriously. It’s important to sit back and say, ‘Time to have that glass of wine,’ and see people and not become too nunlike.”

The actress just wrapped “Jude,” based on Thomas Harding’s “Jude the Obscure,” and will next work with Kenneth Branagh, on “Hamlet.” She’s not worried about being typecast as a period-picture performer--”Just because they lived 200 years ago doesn’t mean they didn’t go to the toilet and pick their noses and feel what we feel. Emotions have not changed. They’re not aliens just because they’re wearing corsets.”