When it comes to making movies, behind-the-scenes mishaps are bound to come about. Whether it be big or small, almost every actor has a story from a set they’ve been on, and it turns out Kate Winslet is no different. Throughout her expansive career, Winslet has mentioned a few particular times when the movie set precautions weren’t exactly up to par. From fainting and catching hypothermia on the set of Sense and Sensibility, to nearly drowning on the set of both Titanic and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a glaring question must be asked: What does Hollywood have against Kate Winslet? Obviously, some incidents will happen on set from time to time, ones that you can’t foresee and thus can’t prevent, but these all feel fairly avoidable, so what the heck went wrong?
This ‘Titanic’ Scene Was Too Cold for Comfort
Titanic is a stunning and heartbreaking telling of the very real Titanic sinking back in 1912. Of course, as per Hollywood norms, the film takes some creative liberties and weaves an epic romance among the tragedy that the doomed ship would face. To this day the film, which was released in 1997, still remains one of the highest-grossing films of all time — and it’s not hard to see why. In honor of the film’s twentieth anniversary in 2017, Kate Winslet did an interview with Stephen Colbert, in which he asked her a series of Titanic-related questions. Colbert’s questions cover topics like how often she listens to “My Heart Will Go On” by Céline Dion (to which Winslet says “Absolutely never!”), who really drew the famous portrait of Rose, and they even debate whether Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) could have fit on the door with Rose. But the question that really stuck out was when Winslet was asked if it was true that she caught pneumonia during filming. She reveals that while she didn’t catch pneumonia, she did get hypothermia, to which Colbert comments, “You were really cold.” It earns him a hilarious response from Winslet, “Yeah, I was really f*cking cold!” He reiterates and explains himself, wondering the question we’re all thinking, why was the water so cold on set? Did director James Cameron just want an authentic reaction? Was it an accident? Did the water simply grow cold from a long day of shooting? Kate clears this confusion up as best she can, and explains that there was so much water that they couldn’t heat it all, there was just too much of it to maintain a comfortable temperature.
But as it turns out, catching hypothermia was the least of Winslet’s problems while filming the blockbuster. In an interview with Los Angeles Times back in 1997 when the film premiered, Kate Winslet, who was just 22 at the time, called the six-month shoot “an ordeal.” In the interview, Kate talks about many of the issues she faced while filming, such as the aforementioned hypothermia, contracting the flu, and some injuries. “I chipped a small bone in my elbow,” Winslet said, “And at one point I had deep bruises all over my arms. I looked like a battered wife. I just slipped on the deck.” She also details long shooting days, some that lasted as long as twenty hours, with the majority of that filming taking place at night. She also talked about director James Cameron, and how he was fiercely driven while filming Titanic, as well as detailing “a temper you wouldn’t believe.” This all leads to what was no doubt a terrifying moment for Winslet as she almost drowned while filming a scene. The scene that was the culprit saw Rose and Jack trying to outrun an oncoming wave as they made their way through the sinking ship, only to encounter a closed gate. When they opened it, the long, heavy coat Winslet was donning, got snagged on the gate, submerging her beneath the rushing waters. “I had to sort of shimmy out of the coat to get free,” Winslet recalled. “I had no breath left. I thought I’d burst. And Jim just said, ‘OK, let’s go again.’ That was his attitude. I didn’t want to be a wimp so I didn’t complain.”
James Cameron echoed this statement, saying: “At the point we did that scene, I knew Kate was pretty stoic — she never expressed to me that she didn’t want to continue. It didn’t come to me until about 10 minutes later that she was actually really shaken. It would not be unusual for Kate, after a really big emotional scene, to go and cry for an hour, just as part of the process. In this scene she was never in physical danger, but she perceived that she was.” He continued, “If you have a spill on a horse, you just get right back on the horse; this was a close-up shot and not a situation where she could be doubled. If I had it to do over again, I would probably do the same thing.” Cameron wanted the set and film to feel as real as possible, which often resulted in Kate and Leo doing their own stunts, one of which required them to flail about in a water tank while weighed down.
