Though the titular ship sunk, the careers of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio took off like Rose flying over the Atlantic after the release of James Cameron’s 1997 romantic disaster drama, Titanic. While DiCaprio would immediately set sail for other big-budget films like The Man in the Iron Mask and The Beach, solidifying his place as a young sex symbol in Hollywood, Winslet shied away from larger roles and instead chose to go the indie film route. Although she’s previously spoken out about the harassment and body-shaming that she went through during this time in her life, in a recent interview with Net-a-Porter, Winslet opened up about why she opted for smaller projects like Gillies MacKinnon’s Hideous Kinky and Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke! during such a booming time in her career.
“Journalists would always say, ‘After Titanic,’ you could have done anything and yet you chose to do these small things,’” Winslet recalled, explaining, “And I was like, ‘Yeah, you bet your f–king life I did! Because, guess what, being famous was horrible.” The Academy Award-winning entertainer went on to say that she never took her part in Titanic for granted but was just more cautious moving forward. “I was grateful, of course,” she said, “I was in my early twenties, and I was able to get a flat. But I didn’t want to be followed literally feeding the ducks.”
Along with all the hounding she received from the media about her personal life, so came the comments surrounding her physical appearance. Looking back, Winslet says that she wishes that she would’ve had more of a voice in the matter, citing the bigger platform that today’s female-identifying stars have when it comes to being heard. “[Young women now] know how to use their voice. I felt like [in the aftermath of Titanic] I had to look a certain way, or be a certain thing, and because media intrusion was so significant at that time, my life was quite unpleasant.”
What Kate Winslet Would’ve Said To The Haters
Although she can’t pop in a time machine and travel back almost 30 years into the past to right the wrongs of the patriarchy, Winslet still has words for those who made her life a living hell. In a 2022 interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, she said,
“I would have said to journalists, I would have responded, I would have said, ‘ Don’t you dare treat me like this . I’m a young woman, my body is changing, I’m figuring it out, I’m deeply insecure, I’m terrified, don’t make this any harder than it already is .’ That’s bullying, you know, and actually borderline abusive, I would say.”
The 2000s saw Winslet return to the mainstream bit by bit. Her latest project, The Regime, will be her third with HBO, where she found award-winning success with her previous two TV show, Mildred Pierce and Mare of Easttown.
You can check out the trailer for The Regime below and catch it when it drops on March 3, with streaming available on Max. Read up on everything we know about the satirical political drama here and stay tuned to Collider for updates.
