Kate Winslet said she had to be “brave” for Lee nude scenes, commends young actresses for being “unafraid”
"The culture is changing in the way that I couldn’t in my wildest dreams have imagined in my 20s," Kate Winslet says
Aux News Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet is no stranger to the rampant body shaming and belittling that so often plagues women in Hollywood. While, fortunately, it may seem unthinkable now, the veteran actor experienced a whole wave of hate after filming Titanic, because, according to her, people said she was too fat for both her and Jack to fit on that infamous door. (An opinion as scientifically unsound as it is sexist and cruel.) Now, almost three decades later, Winslet is finally starting to see some changes in the industry. She’s also refusing to let the haters get her down.
“The men who think you want and need their help are unbelievably outraging,” the Mare Of Easttown star said in a recent Vogue cover story. Winslet’s latest film Lee, which she produced and stars in, chronicles the life of World War II photographer and journalist Lee Miller. But while the film had a well–received opening at TIFF this past weekend, Winslet says it’s been a long and frustrating journey to get here. “I’ve… had a director say to me: ‘Listen, you do my film and I’ll get your little Lee funded…’ Little!” she continued. “Or we’d have potential male investors saying things like: ‘Tell me, why am I supposed to like this woman?’”
It’s no wonder, then, that Winslet refused to let anything get in her way when the film actually went into production—not even a day-one back injury that caused “three massive hematomas” on her spine and prevented her from working out before filming multiple nude scenes.
“You know I had to be really fucking brave about letting my body be its softest version of itself and not hiding from that,” she said. “And believe me, people amongst our own team would say, ‘You might just want to sit up a bit.’ And I’d go, ‘Why? [Because of] the bit of flesh you can see? No, that’s the way it’s going to be!’”
But Winslet does see a real, undeniable benefit to all of the hardship she endured. “Young actresses now—fuck me—they are unafraid. It makes me so proud,” she said when asked if #MeToo created lasting change in the industry. “[A]ll the shit flinging, all the struggle, all the using my voice for years, often being finger-pointed at and laughed at—I don’t give a shit! It was all bloody worth it. Because the culture is changing in the way that I couldn’t in my wildest dreams have imagined in my 20s.”
52 Comments
When I saw the film title “Lee” I thought this might have actually been made.
…letting my body be its softest version of itself…Gonna have to use that one.
I had no idea I how brave I was being since my early 30s!
Took your clothes off in a lot of movies, did you?
I get that she’s protective of her film and her vision for the film. And I haven’t seen the film. But I wonder what would have happened if potential investors had said “Tell me, why am I supposed to like this person?” rather than use the word woman. Is the problem that they’re sexist, or is the problem that the main character is unlikable?
The problem is that it’s okay for men to be unlikeable, to the point that the “flawed male antihero” (read: this guy’s a jerk) has become a major cliche.
Well, not really. Name a male antihero who is “unlikable”. I mean, Don Draper and Walter White were objectively terrible people, but they were likable as hell, which is why audiences didn’t like it when they got called out for all the crap they did.
“I mean, Don Draper and Walter White were objectively terrible people, but they were likable as hell,”
Um, neither was in any way likable. That’s not why anyone (except you, apparently) watched those shows.
I’d say Tony Soprano is unlikeable. I mean, I guess some people watched him and liked who he was, but he’s a racist, sexist, cheating, violent maniac. Just objectively there’s a lot to dislike there.
Walter White was not likable by the last couple of seasons of Breaking Bad. Jesse was likeable but Walter was not.
Maybe, but a lot of people at the time were saying that they hoped Walter would get away with it in the end, which implies they still liked him to a degree.
Walter White was supremely unlikable, so much so that I peaced out of after the first season and only came back after people told me it had improved. I wouldn’t say Draper was likeable either, just charming and watchable.
I still don’t understand anyone finding Don Draper likable after the second episode or so.
I’m pretty sure that the problem is people seem more likely to watch and enjoy a movie about a man who is supposed to be unlikable than a movie about a woman who is supposed to be unlikable.It’s not my place to tell people what they should or shouldn’t like, but if you’re writing off a movie because the main character is “unlikable” (and is supposed to be) you’re shutting yourself off from a lot of interesting stories.
Unlikable characters are there to be killed off, think Di Caprio in Django or Jennifer Jason leigh in the Hateful Eight.
It’s obviously not the point of a biopic about a photographer.
Villains can be relatable though, like the Joker in TDK or the Joker Movie, or Charlize Theron in Monster. You want the audience to be able to identify to their struggles and mindset despite them doing terrible things.
I just find that to be an incredibly limiting view, albeit one most people seem to share. I loved Uncut Gems and I Care A Lot. Many people I talked to didn’t, because the protagonists were unlikable. Likable protagonists are not a requirement to tell a good or entertaining or interesting story (though they do tend to require a skilled storyteller).
Well, they’re here to be “punished” in some way.
You can’t have a unlikeable character and have him win, or maybe if the point of the movie is to frustrate the audience. If you have an example I would be happy to hear it.
I mean, right off the bat, I don’t think the point of every movie should be for the main character to “win.” Tragedies are inherently stories about people losing, for example.I recently rewatched Nightcrawler, a movie about an unlikable man played by Jake Gyllenhaal. His character wins in the end. I liked it a lot. But other people might argue that they did like him, in spite of him doing horrible, evil things. It’s certainly the exception. Most movies about unlikable characters end with them getting their comeuppance.
NIghtcrawler is a great example, he is unlikable and he does win in the end.
I didn’t say the point of every movie is for the main character to win.
I said unlikeable characters are not here to win in the end, except to frustrate the audience.
I think you have a winner with Nightcrawler. It’s a rare kind of movie though, like you said people don’t like that. I did love the movie though.
Another good example would be American Psycho, the ending makes it particularly twisted.
You’re right; I oversimplified what you said, and I’m sorry. I don’t think a movie like Nightcrawler is intended to frustrate the audience either, but it sounds like we’re in agreement about it and how rare it is for movies like it to work. I still feel that most people do expect main characters to win, and for bad characters to lose, and too much of that just leads to really boring entertainment IMO.
Uncut Gems is a good example.
The movie is putting you in his shoes, the stress of his life, the deceptions and constant struggle of his hustles and bad decisions.
He is pathetic, he’s a loser that tries too hard to win, you feel sorry for him, and in the end he gets killed and it’s his own fault. But he’s not unlikeable, you like him because you feel sorry for him.I didn’t see I care a lot.
I think “likable” can have different meanings to different people, but at least one friend of mine didn’t like the movie because they despised his character. I thought the movie does a great job making you root for him, but I didn’t feel sorry for him because his problems were entirely his fault. And stripping away the filmmaking for a moment, if you were trying to pitch the script and an investor asked, “Well why am I supposed to like this character?” How would you answer? He’s not very likable at all on paper.I recommend I Care A Lot. Not a perfect film but Rosamund Pike’s performance is worth it alone.
No reason to be sorry, it’s an interesting conversation. I don’t know everything about movies or making them.
To answer your question about what I would say to investors to sell a movie like nightcrawler, the low budget and the cast attached to it must have been the selling point. These type of movies gets made because they attract a great actor to the script before they start selling it.
As for selling the character, I have seen the movie once and a while ago. I guess the character is more of a vehicle to portray how our society is becoming more and more voyeuristic and the length some people are ready to go to feed this pathological need to see violence. To show the real violence behind it and to make the audience realize how they are complicit to this, how they enable these type of behaviour by not changing the channel to something less gruesome.
It’s a bleak movie, a hard sell for sure. But you’re right, it’s what makes it so interesting. Also I’m a videographer, so I can relate in how we need and sometimes are forced to push boundaries to get the shot that will be able to capture the attention of the audience. At times you feel uncomfortable to have stolen some of those moments.
I finally saw clockwork orange a few weeks ago, man this movie is another great example and paved the way for these kind of characters. I don’t know if you seen it but it’s amazing, but it’s a given with Kubrick.
I saw A Clockwork Orange for the first time when I was a teenager and I remember being so affected by it in a way that no other movie had up until then. It’s difficult to watch but I agree, so incredibly well-made.
This may be me, but I think ‘Oppenheimer’ did a good job of at least making its central character hard to like – for all that Robert Downey Jr. plays the antagonist, I can kind of see how he bristled at the way Oppenheimer treated him – while keeping him as the hero of the story.
“Is the problem that they’re sexist, or is the problem that the main character is unlikable?”
The problem is that they acted as though they were doing her a favour, and that they weren’t going to help her get it made because they believed in the story, they were just going to help her if she helped them.
It’s a poorly worded question to be honest. A better question would have been “Why and how am I supposed to relate to this character.”
Doesn’t matter man or woman, hero or villain, if the audience can relate to him/her, they’ll like said character.
the veteran actor experienced a whole wave of hate after filming Titanic, because, according to her, people said she was too fat for both her and Jack to fit on that infamous door. I was in college when that movie came out. I don’t remember a single male my age group who saw that film who wasn’t thankful for Kate Winslet’s nude scene. Who were these people that could look at drop-dead gorgeous early 21 year old Kate Winslet and say “Oh, she’s too fat!”?
Just neckbeard mouth breathers. She wasn’t rail thin but it’s not like she wasn’t also stunningly beautiful
“Just neckbeard mouth breathers.”
Yeah, I bet it was mostly neckbeard mouth breathers and not women.
Bitter assholes who feel entitled to women’s bodies and mad when they can’t control them.
Bingo.
There was a lot of fat-shaming of her in the press, if you didn’t see it be glad
I never understood the idea that Kate Winslet isn’t crazy attractive. Even in Mare of Easttown they tried really hard to make her look kind of old, tired and rough looking, but a bunch of times it would be like “nope it’s still Kate Winslet and still super hot”.
“I never understood the idea that Kate Winslet isn’t crazy attractive.”
All taste is subjective. That’s literally all you need to know.
Your dream woman may be completely unattractive to the rest of the world.
MURDER DURDER!
Twitter users with the loudest, shittiest opinions are usually the only ones being reported on.Social media is not real life.
I could somewhat see in some of her other films people complaining about her not being “skeleton like”, but she was absolutely perfect in Titanic.I mean, seriously, WTAF.
I’ve never seen (all of) Titanic (or her nude seen in it), but I can’t imagine there has been a single moment in her adult life (or mine) when I wouldn’t have crawled through broken glass to split a bottle of wine with Kate Winslet.
Look, we men can be pigs. I get it.
But I feel like these decisions over who is too old, too fat, whatever, are being made by 70-year-old producer rich pigs and not like, actual male pigs on the street.
Who decided Anne Hathaway was too old to play opposite Daniel raig as a Bond woman. Like, um, what? I can tell you none of the men in my pigpen signed off on that. Whoever called Kate Winslet fat. She was a goddess then and now.
I was 18 when Bull Durham came out. Susan Sarandon was 41 playing a character in her late 30s and Annie Savoy still remains one of the top 3 sexiest women I’ve ever seen on a movie screen. She blew that little blonde twerp in the movie off the screen.
No one actually checks with us. I can tell you that.
I can only imagine what they thought about her in The Reader.
Everybody everywhere wanted to fuck her in Titanic. Literally nobody said she looked fat.
Women of all shapes and sizes, in varying amounts of undress, are all over social media. It’s weird that Hollywood still wants, at the outside, a statuesque female body without clothing.
“It’s weird that Hollywood still wants, at the outside, a statuesque female body without clothing.”
It’s not weird at all if you spend more than 10 seconds listening to any group of women talk about any model/actress/host/woman in show business.
I had never heard of Miller. Her life does look fascinating. Why was she unlikeable?
I do find it odd that she photographed herself in Hitler’s bathtub. Shock value, a political statement? I just would never want my body, naked or otherwise, in such close proximity to that monster.
“I just would never want my body, naked or otherwise, in such close proximity to that monster.”
Hitler wasn’t in the bathtub with her, moron.
1) It’s a bathtub. I don’t think you can catch “proclivity for virulent, antisemitic, genocidal activities” from a bathtub…
2) It’s not at all difficult to find people taking smiling and/or duckface selfies at the fucking gates of Auschwitz. That’s about a thousand times worse than photographing one’s self in anyone’s bathtub. If anything, the bathtub photo could be interpreted as “The world won; you lost.” I’m struggling to get there with “my best hip hop pose + macht frei…”
Because it’s hilarious comic relief after a long, grueling spell covering a vicious war that went on for ages?
Idk. I read that she stayed in his apartmenet for a while. I’m dealing with some nearly Hitler-grade evil IRL and I wouldn’t want to be in that atmosphere for long. The deliberate murder of 6 million European Jews and 5 million prisoners of war. I’d have nightmares.
I was born 1991. Kate Winslets nude scene in Titanic was a sexual awakening for me. I obsessed over it hard-core. I had no idea that older people body shamed her for that. That’s such a glorious nude scene from my childhood don’t you dare!
Man, how interesting. I fucking adore Lee Miller and Man Ray, looking forward to checking this out. Years ago I wrote a script about Man Ray, and totally thought Winslet would be absolute perfection as Miller.
Glad she had the same idea! It HAS to be better than my clunky old mess of words.
“I’ve… had a director say to me: ‘Listen, you do my film and I’ll get your little Lee funded…’ Little!” she continued. “Or we’d have potential male investors saying things like: ‘Tell me, why am I supposed to like this woman?’”
I don’t think those things were said because she’s a woman. The first one is condescending, but men are condescending to other men too.
The second question is a fair question but poorly worded. If the point of the movie is to like the lead character.
Not everything is misogyny. Assholes tends to be assholes to both women and men. Men also struggle to get projects made and also have to deal with pricks.