Kate Winslet has said she takes pride in looking less-than-perfect on screen because “it is my life on my face, and that matters,” and “it wouldn’t occur to me to cover that up”.
The actress, 48, revealed she was encouraged by a crew member on her latest film to sit up straighter while wearing a swimsuit because it would look more flattering.
Winslet, who will next be seen playing the photographer Lee Miller in the biopic Lee, told Harper’s Bazaar UK: “There’s a bit where Lee’s sitting on a bench in a bikini… And one of the crew came up between takes and said: ‘You might want to sit up straighter’. So you can’t see my belly rolls? Not on your life! It was deliberate, you know?”
Asked if she does not mind looking less-than-perfect on the big screen, she said: “The opposite. I take pride in it because it is my life on my face, and that matters. It wouldn’t occur to me to cover that up.”
Winslet was just 20 when she found fame in 1995’s Heavenly Creatures and was 22 when she became a global megastar in James Cameron’s disaster blockbuster Titanic.
Reflecting on some of the press coverage she received at the time, she said: “There was a lot of bullying of me that went on in the media, and that did get to me.
“Look at all those years in my 20s when I was all sorts of different shapes and sizes.”
Winslet said she feels “a huge sense of relief” that women are now so “much more accepting of themselves and refusing to be judged.”
She added: “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.”
Winslet also said she refuses to have work done on her face, adding: “I think people know better than to say, ‘You might wanna do something about those wrinkles’.
“I’m more comfortable in myself as each year passes. It enables me to allow the opinions of others to evaporate.”
The September issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK is on sale from August 8.
