Kate Winslet, a multiple award-winning actress best known for her roles in Titanic and Mare of Easttown, tells up about career-related advice she received early on and properly rejected. Since the 1990s, Winslet has been consistently employed, and James Cameron’s Titanic is much to blame for her rise to fame. She has acted in several well-regarded films, including Little Children, Sense and Sensibility, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Steve Jobs, and Contagion. Winslet has also received other honors, including two Emmys and one Academy Award nomination for the limited series Mare of Easttown in 2021. She has also been nominated for seven Academy Awards and has won one for the 2008 film The Reader. The actor has faced her share of obstacles in the field.
Winslet exposed obscene parts of the entertainment business in an interview with The Sunday Times, including the advice she received early in her acting career to stick with “fat girl” roles. The actress claimed that this first advice, which she rejected, persisted even after she started landing jobs, with her agent frequently being questioned her weight. And while Winslet persevered and established herself, the obsession with her weight lifted the veil on the shadowier side of acting. See Winslet’s remarks after the jump:
“It can be extremely negative. People are subject to scrutiny that is more than a young, vulnerable person can cope with. But in the film industry it is really changing. When I was younger my agent would get calls saying, ‘How’s her weight?’ I kid you not. So it’s heartwarming that this has started to change.”
Why Kate Winslet was correct to disregard unwise advice
Winslet has more than demonstrated her acting prowess over her illustrious career. Even more recently, she has added production work to her list of accomplishments, serving as executive producer on Mare of Easttown and producing Lee, a movie in which she also stars as Elizabeth Lee Miller, a celebrated World Combat II war correspondent for Vogue magazine. It seems shocking that Winslet could have been constrained by anything as minor as her weight given her tremendous skill.
Hollywood already struggles with an unrealistic body image that is sometimes presented as the norm, with many stars meeting particular standards for how they should look. The damage has already been done to many because stars are sometimes judged entirely on their attractiveness and less on their talent, which is frequently harsher for actresses, even though the business appears to be making improvements. Fortunately, performers like Winslet can rise above critical remarks and feedback to achieve success in their own right. Winslet was correct to reject the impolite advice, and while she was probably wounded by it, her success served as the ultimate retaliation against those in the business who couldn’t see past her size.