Kate Winslet Has Frank 4-Word Message About Women Showing Their Bodies On Camera
Kate Winslet would like to reframe the public narrative about taking ownership of one’s unvarnished appearance on the big screen.
In an interview with Time published Thursday, Winslet brushed off the idea that female actors who opt to forgo makeup and are comfortable baring everything on camera should be deemed “brave.”
“That’s not fucking brave,” she told the publication. “I’m not an ex-postmaster fighting for justice, I’m not in the Ukraine. I’m doing a job that matters to me.”
Winslet, a 2009 Oscar winner for “The Reader,” will next be seen as renowned World War II photographer Lee Miller in “Lee,” which hits theaters this month. The biopic, directed by Ellen Kuras, apparently had a rocky production, with Winslet even personally paying the cast and crew’s salaries for two weeks.
Much of the early buzz on “Lee” has included discussion of the film’s nude scenes. To prepare for her role, Winslet stopped working out so her body would appear, as Harper’s Bazaar put it, “authentically soft.”
The film’s production team, Winslet explained, were caught a bit off-guard at first.
“There’s a bit where Lee’s sitting on a bench in a bikini... And one of the crew came up between takes and said: ‘You might want to sit up straighter.’ So you can’t see my belly rolls? Not on your life!” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “It was deliberate, you know?”
As with many female stars, Winslet has had to endure plenty of scrutiny of her physical appearance. While shooting what was to be her breakout role in “Titanic,” Winslet was reportedly nicknamed “Kate Weighs-a-Lot” by director James Cameron.
The criticism only grew more widespread after the movie became a blockbuster. In particular, Winslet’s body was a subject of widespread mockery as viewers argued about whether she and co-star Leonardo DiCaprio could have comfortably floated on a wooden door in the freezing Atlantic Ocean, a debate inspired by one of the movie’s final scenes.
These days, Winslet tells Harper’s Bazaar she’s come to “take pride” in simply looking like her natural self on screen.
“I think people know better than to say, ‘You might wanna do something about those wrinkles,’” she said. “I’m more comfortable in myself as each year passes. It enables me to allow the opinions of others to evaporate.”