Winslet’s life a labor of love
Kate Winslet is slicing a peach. On any other day, it would be little more than domestic trivia, but today we are talking about Labor Day, her new movie directed by Jason Reitman that contains many juicy scenes of peaches, the slicing of said peaches, and the baking of many golden-crusted peach pies alongside co-star Josh Brolin.
“Don’t you just love it when that happens?” she says, acknowledging the sometimes freakish synchronicities that surround us daily.
Once we agree we are on the same page, there’s yet another lightning strike when her handset starts to crackle and she switches rooms. “Can you hear me? I live in a house with very thick walls.”
The imagery is too good to ignore because Winslet was still pregnant at the time the phone call to London took place.
Mere weeks away from delivering the baby that would be called “Bear,” the “thick walls” comment had a uterine connotation that put us on the Grand Canal of birth, motherhood and what it means to be a woman.
“People in England haven’t a clue about Labor Day: They think it’s all about people giving birth. But isn’t it funny that we are talking about Labor Day and my own labour day isn’t that far off.” Do you like being pregnant? “Yeah. I do … but I’ve never been one of those women who says ‘Oh! I loved being pregnant. I felt so sexy and alive!’
“I have occasional moments where I might feel those things but mostly I think how can I keep myself energized enough to get through this, because it doesn’t matter whether you are rich, poor, young or old, as a pregnant person it’s the same for all of us: hugely challenging,” she says.
Winslet says she couldn’t watch some of the scenes in Reitman’s new movie when it premièred at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall.
They were too difficult because the character she plays in the film, based on Joyce Maynard’s bestseller, is a woman who struggled with pregnancy.
Her name is Adele, and when she finally does give birth to a son she calls Henry, she makes him the very centre of her universe. For years, they live a cloistered life until a dark stranger played by Brolin barges in and changes their world forever.
It’s a role that could have put Winslet in the role of victim, but there’s something about the way the actress plays all her characters that feels innately strong — even when she’s playing a suicidal wife in Revolutionary Road, or a young woman on the Titanic.
“I love being able to look my own daughter in the eye and say: ‘You are amazing!’ Because we are amazing! And sometimes, I think about my own childhood — which was perfectly lovely — but I don’t remember any celebration of being a girl. It was always girls against boys,” she says.
“But we don’t need to prove that we can do stuff too. We just f-ing can!”
Winslet says she enjoyed articulating that last sentence, and she loves feeling it even more. But she can understand how some people might think it sounds a little empty coming from a celebrity.
“You know, I can see how some might think: ‘Well, that’s easy for you to say in your fancy house and your large bank balance and people who work for you.’ Well, I don’t have any people working for me, by the way, but at the end of the day, we are all women in this world,” she says.
“And that’s a lot, especially for mothers. It’s a lot to feel good and to be a good parent and a good partner and to make your loved ones know you are there for them and to feel secure, and we all multi-task to pull that off, which is why women really are amazing.”
Women also need more support than they usually get, which is why Winslet is always behind her friends, and her characters, even if they appear to be making decisions that are damaging to themselves.
“I will still be understanding because sometimes all they really need to feel is understood to get through whatever it is they are going through.”
In the case of Adele, Winslet says Reitman’s preference for no rehearsals meant she had to really know who Adele was. “It’s just homework, really. But I did want Gattlin (Gattlin Griffith, who plays young Henry) to know I was there for him to lean on.
“I was lucky that we had a great relationship,” she says.
“Film sets can be really intimidating at the best of times and even more so if you are young without so much experience.
“I remember feeling that way, that everyone is looking at me and I am rubbish, and that feeling doesn’t entirely go away.”
Winslet says she remembers saying goodbye to her boyfriend and her entire family at Heathrow when she set off for New Zealand — and what would be the beginning of a soaring screen career — for the filming of Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures when she was just 17.
“There’s an interesting level of anxiety that hangs around as actors. You think: ‘Sh-t. What are we going to do in this scene?’ It is all about the element of the unknown from one moment to the next. You never know what’s going to happen. Which is one of the reasons why I love acting,” she says.
“You have to take risks as you walk into the mystery. And I just love it.”