Yahoo Lifestyle Kate Winslet Explains How Being Called ‘Fat’ Her Entire Life Actually Helped Her
Kate Winslet has the skinny on how to deal with being called fat.
The “Titanic” alum sat down with Cecilia Vega for Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” and, of course, they touched on the media’s favoritetopic to bring up with Winslet: public criticism of her weight and her body.
The “Avatar: The Way of Water” star ― who has brought up the subject herself elsewhere, as part of her advocacy for body acceptance ― told Vega that her enlightened attitude about her body stems from a “quiet determination” to prove her haters wrong.
Winslet made this point about seven minutes into the interview, recalling a drama teacher who told her in her youth: “Darling, if you’re going to look like this, you’ll have to settle for the ‘fat girl’ parts.”
“And I was never even fat,” Winslet added, with a frustrated laugh.
“What did that do to your spirit, your confidence?” Vega asked.
“It made me think, ‘I’ll just show you,’” Winslet said. “Just quietly. It was like a sort of a quiet determination, really.”
That “quiet determination” served Winslet well. In her teens, she scored her debut film role as Juliet in 1994’s “Heavenly Creatures,” and at 20 she snagged her breakout role as Rose, the romantic lead in the 1997 megahit “Titanic.”
Still, even as Winslet became a star, she experienced an onslaught of scrutiny of her body from the public and the media.
When Vega recalled this time in Winslet’s life and asked the Oscar winner if she ever got to confront any of these body-shamers “face to face,” Winslet said she did once.
“I let them have it. I said, ‘I hope this haunts you,’” Winlset recalled telling her critic.
Winslet then became visibly emotional, pausing as tears welled in her eyes.
“It was a great moment because it wasn’t just for me,” Winslet told Vega, her voice growing hoarse. “It was for all those people who were subjected to that level of harassment.”
The “Mare of Easttown” star, 49, now seems to have embraced the quietly rebellious approach of simply not caring how others perceive her.
She told Vega that while shooting her 2023 film “Lee” — which follows the story of Lee Miller, a real-life former fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent during World War II — she was subtly body-shamed by a crew member.
In the scene, Winslet was seated while wearing a bathing suit, and according to the actor, the crew member suggested she “sit up straighter” to hide her “belly rolls.”
Vega asked Winslet if she sucked in her stomach after that suggestion, to which Winslet quickly replied: “No! I don’t think Lee would’ve done [that].”
“Her ease with her physical self was hard-won,” Winslet said of Lee — something that could, perhaps, also be said of the actor herself.
