Kate Winslet’s career took off with James Cameron‘s 1997 romance Titanic, but the actress has revealed that the fame it brought her made life rather “unpleasant.”
So much so, she retreated into smaller roles.
Speaking to PORTER magazine, Winslet opened up about the period of overwhelming public scrutiny she experienced after the film first premiered.
“I felt like 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,” she admitted.
“Journalists would always say, ‘After Titanic, you could have done anything and yet you chose to do these small things’.
“And I was like, ‘Yeah, you bet your life I did! Because, guess what, being famous was horrible.’”
After Titanic, Winslet appeared in 1998’s Hideous Kinky, voiced a character in Faeries and starred in Holy Smoke and Quills. Her next widely recognised role wasn’t until 2004, when she appeared in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Still, the actress has no regrets about taking the role that changed her life with Cameron’s film.
“It’s not a burden, any of it,” she said.
“[Titanic] continues to bring people huge amounts of joy,” she said. “The only time I am like, ‘Oh God, hide,’ is if we are on a boat somewhere.”
Winslet has openly discussed the amount of unwanted attention she received from the media and the public after Titanic, and not all of it was positive.
In 2022, the actress fired back at trolls claiming Leonardo DiCaprio’s character died in the movie because her character’s weight wouldn’t allow him to get on the floating door alongside her.
“Apparently, I was too fat,” Winslet said during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “Why were they so mean to me? They were so mean. I wasn’t even f**king fat.”
She also called out how poorly journalists treated her at the time, saying, “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.”
But the actress only had good things to say about working with DiCaprio on the film, telling Entertainment Tonight in 2023, “He had this effervescent energy that was really magnetic and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is gonna be fun. We’re definitely gonna get along.’”
