Kate Winslet has revealed she despises the “bulls**t of perfection” that has been expected of her since finding fame and has claimed she’s “always been a rubbish famous person” because of it.
The Oscar-winner made the comments while promoting her new project, I Am Ruth, and revealed how she drew on her own experience of being a mother to teenagers for the poignant Channel 4 drama.
Speaking at a Q&A for the feature, Winslet said it was important for her and filmmaker Dominic Savage to make a “truthful” piece of television. She admitted that much like her character Ruth - a concerned mother who witnesses her teenage daughter Freya (played by Winslet’s real-life daughter Mia Threapleton, 22), retreating into herself as she becomes more consumed by the pressures of social media - she too didn’t know what to do at times parenting her adolescent kids.
“We wanted to tell a story of our time without preaching, and create an avenue for conversation, being able to say to people, ‘I didn’t know what to do either. It’s alright,’ she said.
“There are some times when you look at your children, and you think, ‘f***, what do I say? What do I do? Where’s the manual? Can I phone a friend?’ and so much of it we do make up as we go along.
“You know, myself included, I think often when you’re a person in the public eye or high profile figure, the media kind of enshrines you in this kind of bulls**t of perfection and I’ve always hated that.
“I’ve always been a kind of rubbish famous person anyway. So, we just wanted to tell a story that felt timely, visceral and truthful, even though obviously there are parts of it that are very hard to watch.”
The emotional drama, which will air on Channel 4 on Thursday, December 8, is the latest instalment of the Bafta-nominated and female-led drama anthology series I Am created by filmmaker Savage.
The two-hour feature’s fictional storyline, which highlights the mental health crisis affecting young people in the UK, was developed, and co-authored by Winslet and Savage.
With the piece completely improvised, Winslet and her daughter Mia Threapleton looked to personal experience for their characters to use and revealed that many of the emotional scenes in the film were inspired by real-life conversations.
“Hopefully it helps people identify with these conversations because they are real conversations,” Winslet said. “For sure there was some personal overlap, it’s a mother-daughter story. It’s inevitable. We know how to push each other’s buttons as well.
“I’ve been a parent to teenagers, and I’ve also been on the periphery of friends who have raised teenagers, who have gone through some absolutely horrific things.
“So a lot of the conversations you hear, even specific words you hear come out of my mouth, are direct from things friends have said to me.
“There’s that scene where Ruth sits on the bed and says, ‘I just don’t know who I am, I’m really struggling, I don’t like myself, I don’t look forward to anything’, that’s literally a conversation I had with a very close friend a few years ago.
“I, along with Mia, wanted to honour those stories.”
