BUSTING HOLLYWOOD MYTHS
Kate Winslet bares all
AFTER BEING BODY-SHAMED FOR YEARS, THE ACTRESS IS BOLDLY SHOWING OFF HER ‘FLAWS’
There’s no denying Kate Winslet shimmers on the red carpet – a glorious vision of elegance and beauty. But the 45-year-old actress is so determined to keep things real on screen that she insists on showing her “bulgy” bits.
For her latest role as the unashamedly unglamorous Detective Sheehan in Neon’s gritty crime drama Mare of Easttown, Kate put her foot down when she saw that promotional images for the show had been retouched and insisted, instead, that they go out unedited.
“They were like, ‘Kate, really, you can’t,’” she laughs. “And
I’m like, ‘Guys, I know how many lines I have by the side of my eye. Please put them all back.”
And when the director told her he was going to edit out a “bulgy bit of belly” from her sex scene with Guy Pearce, she told him, “Don’t you dare!”
Being staunch is a privilege the mother-of-three feels she has earned after 30 years working in an industry that has, at times, wreaked havoc on her self-esteem.
The British-born actress landed her first major screen role at the tender age of 15 in a BBC sci-fi series called Dark Season. Three years later, she made her film debut in Kiwi director Peter Jackson’s acclaimed Heavenly Creatures and by the age of 22, she’d become a household name after starring in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic.
But instead of riding high after her dazzling performance, she found herself having to go into self-protective mode when she was widely criticised for not being thin enough. Late TV host Joan Rivers even mocked, “If she just lost 5lb, Leo would’ve been able to fit on the raft.”
“I remember thinking, ‘This is horrible,’” recalls Kate. “It damaged my confidence.”
Determined not to be cowed by the endless scrutiny, she spoke up about the body shaming she was experiencing, and says, “I got this label of being ballsy and outspoken. No, I was just defending myself.”
Fearing that moving to Hollywood would bruise her morale even further, Kate followed up Titanic with a string of independent films instead of putting her hand up for more blockbusters.
But all that changed after she gave birth to her daughter Mia at the age of 25. “All that just kind of evaporated,” she explains. And she hasn’t looked back. In addition to Mia, 20, who she shares with ex-husband Jim Threapleton, she also has son Joe, 17, with ex-husband Sam Mendes and son Bear, seven, with Edward Abel Smith, who she married in 2012.
Gone is the ingenue who felt under siege and in her place is a much more self-assured Hollywood icon. And when it came to shooting Mare of Easttown, she was more than happy to portray a character who looks like a middle-aged woman and cares not a jot about her appearance.
“Mare Sheehan is a hot mess most of the time,” explains
Kate of her character, who is tasked with finding the killer of a teenage girl. “We made decisions creatively that this was a woman who looked at herself in the mirror when she brushed her teeth in the morning and wouldn’t look in the mirror again. That’s just who she is.”
That meant dressing in flannel shirts, ill-fitting sweats and worn-in jeans, with grown-out roots, spotty skin and a furrowed brow. When Kate noticed in some early cuts that her skin looked too good, “We tried to light it to make it look not nice.”
Even her wardrobe got some special Winslet anti-glam treatment: she left Mare’s outfits crumpled up in a pile on the floor of her trailer so they would appear appropriately unkempt.
It’s a creative freedom Kate has revelled in – and the down-to-earth role echoes the actress’ own level-headed approach to life.
‘Guys, I know how many lines I have by the side of my eye. Please put them all back’
A week before the show began filming, Kate drew one of the producers aside and said, “I don’t know how the process works with booking trucks and equipment, but if I arrive on day one and I have a trailer that’s bigger than everyone else’s, no matter what it says on my contract, I will actually cry.
“And then they changed everything because sure enough, there was a trailer that I was supposed to have that was bigger and there were probably two or three other cast members who were to have the same as me and I said, ‘No, none of that. Everyone is having the same.’
“It’s how it should be. It’s how I endeavour to be as an actor, but it’s also how I try to be in my life as well.”