STAR ENDURES REAL COLD, REAL HEIGHTS AND REAL COUGAR
Oscar winner talks of need for ‘absolute commitment,’ having her co-star’s back and her love of Canada
Kate Winslet is used to acting in extreme conditions. Her most famous role, co-starring in
Titanic opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, had her shivering in a giant tank atop a floating piece of wood in an uncomfortable recreation of the unforgiving Atlantic Ocean.
Now the Oscar-winning British actress is playing an air-crash survivor, stranded on a high peak with co-star Idris Elba and a friendly dog, in The Mountain Between Us. She really did ascend into the frozen heights to make it, brought to the set by helicopter every day of the shoot.
The romantic thriller opens Friday, following its world premiere last month at TIFF, where she spoke to the Star:
So which was the chillier experience for you: the waters of Titanic or the ice and snow of The Mountain Between Us?
I just can’t compare the two! They were such different experiences, but we really did everything that we did on that mountain. It really was -38 C, we really were at 10,000 feet, and you really can’t breathe at that altitude, especially when running through snow. And so it was brutal, it was. It was incredible, but it was brutal and freezing.
Titanic was logistically difficult for a whole set of other reasons. It was a complicated shoot, a very difficult film to be a part of, but we were much younger then and there were lots more people (in the filmmaking team).
This one had a small crew of incredible Canadians, some of the same people who had made The
Revenant with Leo, and I am going to go on record as saying: I love Canada! I love Canadians, and I am obsessed with (Justin) Trudeau. I met his mother, actually, at a recent event in England called WE Day, which is a Canadian event, is a Canadian organization. I spoke in front of 20,000 children about confidence and how social media can have a negative impact on your life. It was amazing, Margaret (Trudeau) was there, and she was talking about mental health, and she was actually extraordinary. How was it working with Idris Elba at such a high altitude and in such cold weather?
When you work so closely with one other actor, you get very good at giving bite-sized chunks of information that you know they’re going to need for the thing they’re about to shoot. So sometimes we’d be filming a piece which is just Alex (Winslet’s character) making her way down the mountain, and Idris would be 10,000 feet down at base camp waiting to come up and essentially swap with me, because we’d have to shoot in such a regimented way.
So I would be hunkered down, waiting to get into the helicopter that he was about to get out of, and the first thing he’d do, he would come to me, and we’d be huddled head to head, and I was shouting at him: “The cameras! You’re going to be 400 feet up the slope . . . make sure that you take water in your pockets, because no one else will get to you for at least two hours!” We would stuff candy in each other’s pockets and be like, “Go! See you later!” It was amazing how we went into a mode of just accepting that that was how it had to be. You and Idris make a good match, but you both really seemed to get along with the dog in the film. That pooch has so much personality.
He was wonderful, actually, and his name is Riley. He was just terrific.
I developed my own way of communicating with him. I could really get him to totally do things, just by talking to him. And just having him trust me was really wonderful . . . although Idris kept saying (if the situation were real), “I so would have eaten this animal by now!” Was the cougar in the film real or CGI? It certainly looks real.
The cougar was real. We had three different cougars and I was in the space with the cougar, but they did have to use — for insurance purposes, which I was really bummed out about, actually — they did have to use a double for the back of my head for the shots when the cougar is actually coming into the plane. But the cougar did come into the plane. It was all very, very real. It sounds like being an actor is a lot harder than people might think.
I do find it really hard, actually. I do still find it really hard, but that’s why I love it.
Because it’s not just the challenge, it’s the absolute commitment to not f---ing up that you have to make on a daily basis. You have to. And sometimes you do f--- up. This interview was edited and condensed.