Titanic star Kate Winslet: ‘Why I refused to cover my belly rolls for film’s bikini scene’
She’s stripped off for various scenes during her Hollywood career, but even Kate Winslet isn’t immune to remarks about her ‘belly rolls’.
The 48-year-old revealed she was told to “sit up straighter” while filming a bikini scene for her latest movie, Lee.
The Titanic star replies: “So you can’t see my belly rolls? Not on your life. I take pride in looking less than perfect because it is my life on my face, and that matters. It wouldn’t occur to me to cover that up.”
Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The English actress told Harper’s Bazaar magazine she stopped exercising prior to filming Lee so her body would look authentically soft.
“I’m more comfortable in myself as each year passes. It enables me to allow the opinions of others to evaporate,” she said.
Winslet, who shot to fame as the Titanic’s tragic heroine Rose, famously called out men’s magazine GQ for digitally slimming her down on its cover back in 2003.
“Look at all those years in my twenties when I was all sorts of different shapes and sizes,” she recalled, adding she felt bullied by the media.
“I do feel a huge sense of relief that women are so much more accepting of themselves and refusing to be judged.
“Because I don’t know a single contemporary of mine who grew up seeing her mother looking in the mirror and saying: ‘I look nice!’ My mother never did: it was always, oh God, I don’t think I can wear this, do I look hippy, does my bum look big? We waste so much time being down on ourselves and I’m just not doing it ever again.”
Lee, which is in cinemas in October, follows the life of World War II reporter Lee Miller, who documented the Normandy invasion and the horrors of the concentration camps.
“It’s so interesting because in all the letters I read, and her personal diaries, she was never down on herself, or critical of men. I admire that so much,” says Winslet.
“We label women all the time — it drives me mad. If you think about how Lee is described, it’s: ‘outspoken’, ‘headstrong’, ‘determined’ — these big, fat words ... we don’t describe men as ballsy or outspoken, because men just say whatever they want to say and do whatever they want to do, and it’s expected and permitted, but when a woman does that, we slap her with a label, and it sticks. No! I’m just saying what I think, I’m just being honest!”
Winslet helped produce and fund the film. The September issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK is on sale tomorrow.
