Kate Winslet has broken down at the memory of being told she was overweight by journalists on the red carpet as a 22-year-old.
Speaking on US talkshow 60 Minutes to promote her new Lee Miller biopic, Winslet recalled her experience at the 1998 Golden Globe awards, which she attended as part of the Titanic team.
In a clip shared during the show, Winslet was seen walking down the carpet in a black and white lace gown, alongside co-star Leonardo DiCaprio. The video then cuts to an interviewer telling Winslet she looked “a little melted and poured” into the dress, before adding that she should have worn one “two sizes larger”.
“It’s absolutely appalling,” said Winslet, rewatching the footage. “What kind of a person must they be to do something like that to a young actress who’s just trying to figure it out?”
Winslet went on to say such attacks were everyday occurrences at the time, and although she has never publicly called out critics for body-shaming comments, she added that she had sought private humiliation for them by raising it.
“I let them have it,” said Winslet. “I said, ‘I hope this haunts you.’ It was a great moment. It was a great moment because it wasn’t just for me,” she added. “It was for all those people who were subjected to that level of harassment. It was horrific, it was really bad.”
Winslet went on to say such personal criticism had long dogged her career, with her acting teacher telling her she’d have to come to terms with being “fat”.
She recalled him advising her: “‘Now, listen, Kate. I’m telling you, darling, if you’re going to look like this, you’ll have to settle for the fat girl parts.’”
Yet, Winslet said, “I was never even fat. It made me think, ‘I’ll just show you – just quietly.’”
The actor, who won an Academy Award for her role as a Nazi guard in 2008 drama The Reader, said in many movies her entire body was perceived to fall short.
“People say, ‘Oh, you were so brave for this role. You didn’t wear any makeup. You had wrinkles,’” she said, flagging the film industry’s double standards.
“Do we say to the men, ‘Oh, you were so brave for this role. You grew a beard?’ No. We don’t. It’s not brave. It’s playing the part,” she said.
In Lee, Winslet plays the model turned war photographer from her mid 20s to her late 60s, and has said that she was encouraged to sit up straighter in one scene, the better to conceal her “belly rolls”.
Speaking to the BBC earlier this year, Winslet said she disregarded the advice, calling it “absolutely bizarre” because Miller’s body wouldn’t have benefited from gym conditioning.
“It was my job to be like Lee,” said Winslet. “She wasn’t lifting weights and doing pilates, she was eating cheese, bread and drinking wine and not making a big deal of it, so of course her body would be soft.”
“But I think we’re so used to perhaps not necessarily seeing that and enjoying it – the instinct, weirdly, is to see it and criticise it or comment on it in some way.
“It’s interesting how much people do like labels for women. And they very much liked them in Lee’s day, and, annoyingly, they sort of still do – we slap these labels on women that we just don’t have for men. It’s absolutely bizarre to me.”
Speaking to CBS, Winslet added that as she approaches her 50th birthday, she has stopped listening to the opinion of others about her body as it has become too “exhausting”.
