Actress Kate Winslet On Fame After Titanic, How She Chooses Her Roles, & Why She Doesn't Let Her Children Use Social Media

…You know, it’s really interesting. I’ve only allowed myself in the last few years to talk about the fact that while there were extraordinary upsides in terms of career opportunities and role choices, in its most acute phase of Titanic-ness, it was really not much fun. I didn’t have an infrastructure that went hand in hand with being a famous person. I lived in a small two-bedroom flat in North London. I didn’t have security outside my home; I could never have afforded that. When you get such opportunities young and you’re a girl, you just shut up and be grateful … I was just trying to figure out how to walk out the door without having an epileptic fit from all the paparazzi flashbulbs. Coming from a loving, nurturing, normal family, suddenly everything was abnormal, and normal life was inaccessible. I found that very traumatic, and the scrutiny was intense. Thank God, things have changed now. I had to stand up for myself, but even when I publicly said, “Don’t have a go at me for having curves, that’s just how I am,” there was still a part of me thinking, “Do people really think I’m fat? I’m not fat; I’m just a healthy, normal person.” Having to explain myself or my shape was wrong. The fact that it doesn’t happen anymore makes me want to weep for joy. It’s great to see wonderful actresses today with a voice, playing incredible roles without having to explain themselves. They just do it. They walk onto a set and take ownership, equal to the guys. They have it, and it’s amazing to me…

Recently, NBC journalist Willie Geist sat down with actress Kate Winslet. Kate Winslet, one of the most distinguished actresses of her generation, has captivated audiences with her diverse and compelling roles in film and television. Born Kate Elizabeth Winslet on October 5, 1975, in Reading, Berkshire, England, she has achieved critical acclaim and commercial success in a career spanning over three decades. Winslet’s ability to portray complex, headstrong women has earned her numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. Time magazine recognized her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009 and 2021, and in 2012, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Kate Winslet was born into a family with a rich theatrical heritage. Her parents, Sally Ann (née Bridges) and Roger John Winslet, had backgrounds in acting, though financial stability eluded the family. Winslet’s early life was marked by financial challenges, including periods where the family relied on free meal benefits and charity support. Despite these hardships, Winslet’s family nurtured her love for acting. Her mother worked as a nanny and waitress, while her father took on laboring jobs to support the family. Winslet’s maternal grandparents were actors who ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company, further immersing her in the world of drama from a young age.

Winslet’s first stage appearance came at the age of five, playing Mary in her school’s Nativity play. She described herself as an overweight child who was often bullied, yet she remained undeterred in her passion for acting. Winslet attended the Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead, which also functioned as an agency, providing her with opportunities to audition for acting roles in London. She appeared in a Sugar Puffs commercial and dubbed for foreign films, honing her craft through various amateur productions.

Winslet’s screen debut came at the age of 15 in the BBC television series Dark Season (1991). Her first significant film role was in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994), where she played Juliet Hulme, a teenage murderess. The role required intense preparation, including studying the real-life trial transcripts and interacting with the acquaintances of the real Juliet. The film was critically acclaimed, and Winslet’s performance was hailed as a breakthrough.

Following Heavenly Creatures, Winslet starred in Ang Lee’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1995). Her portrayal of Marianne Dashwood earned her the Screen Actors Guild and British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award in the same category.

Winslet’s career skyrocketed with her role as Rose DeWitt Bukater in James Cameron’s epic romance Titanic (1997). Despite initial reluctance from Cameron, Winslet’s persistence secured her the part opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. Titanic became the highest-grossing film of its time, earning over $2 billion worldwide and establishing Winslet as a global star. The film won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and earned Winslet a nomination for Best Actress.

Post-Titanic, Winslet chose to focus on independent films, believing she still had much to learn. She starred in critically acclaimed period pieces like Quills (2000) and Iris (2001), earning her third Oscar nomination for the latter. Her role in the contemporary science fiction romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) marked a turning point in her career, showcasing her versatility. Winslet received an Oscar nomination for her performance and later described the film as a favorite among her roles.

Winslet continued to impress with her performances in films such as Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), The Holiday (2006), Revolutionary Road (2008), and The Reader (2008). Her portrayal of Hanna Schmitz in The Reader, an illiterate Nazi camp guard, earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also won Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for the role.

In 2011, Winslet starred in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award. Her role as Mare Sheehan in the 2021 HBO miniseries Mare of Easttown further cemented her status as a leading actress, earning her another Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG Award.

Winslet’s personal life has been as eventful as her career. She has three children, including a daughter who has followed in her footsteps to become an actress. Winslet is also known for her philanthropic efforts. She co-founded the Golden Hat Foundation to create autism awareness and has supported various charities and causes, including those focused on literacy, animal rights, and children’s welfare. Winslet has been vocal against body-shaming and bullying, using her platform to promote positive body image and mental health awareness.

Winslet’s contributions to film and television continue to be recognized worldwide. She remains dedicated to her craft, often choosing roles that challenge societal norms and depict strong, complex women. Winslet’s upcoming projects include reprising her role in the sequel Avatar 3 and starring in the HBO miniseries The Regime. Her ability to balance commercial success with artistic integrity ensures that she will remain a significant figure in the entertainment industry for years to come.

The following are excerpts from Kate’s interview.

Willie: In your earliest days, was there any chance you were not going to become an actress given where you came from? Was acting always the dream?

Kate: Well, when you’re little, you know, people say, “When I grow up, I want to be a vet. When I grow up, I want to be a hairdresser. When I grow up, I want to be a teacher.” I would think to myself, “When I grow up, I want to be on stage.” But I didn’t know how to say it. So I would say, “When I grow up, I want to be an air hostess, or I want to be a hairdresser, or I want to be a makeup artist.” I came up with all these things because I didn’t know how to declare it. I just imagined it. But I certainly never thought that I would be in films. I came from a family with not much money. We didn’t even get a VCR until I was 15. I remember getting it; it was secondhand, and we had three VHS cassettes. One was A Chorus Line, one was Bugsy Malone, and the other was some terrible recording of seven episodes of a British soap opera or something. I would watch them endlessly.

It was watching Bugsy Malone and realizing that what Jodie Foster was doing was acting and that she was a kid. I thought, “Wow, that’s a thing. Maybe I want to do that.” But I had no idea how that would happen or where to begin. I sometimes say to people that my career feels like a fluke. I don’t come from privilege; I know it’s difficult for people to believe because I speak well, but I’ve learned that. I grew up going to drama clubs that cost 25p, the equivalent of a quarter, for an hour’s classes. These classes were in scout huts, church halls, or village community centers. Back in the day, there were plenty of those. It makes me sad that there are fewer of those kinds of organizations now, especially in my own country, which supported people who wouldn’t have access to creative expression otherwise.

I feel very fortunate to have grown up in a family that knew there was so much joy in acting — forget the getting paid part, just the doing it. I was very lucky to have that in my life. Very, very lucky.

Willie: And you’ve kept the joy. You love being on a set with a bunch of actors.

Kate: I love it. I love it. I can’t tell you. Even when you look at the call sheet and your pick-up time is 3:50 a.m. or 4:10 a.m. I mean, I’m sure you’ve done it yourself. To me, it feels like a secret. It’s like going to work, and I sometimes say to myself in the dark, being driven to work, “Well, here I am. Someone’s driving me. I have my little coffee in my thermos. I’m running my lines. Who else gets to do this? Who else gets to go to work in the middle of the night and enter that space to create and come up with stuff all day long?” Oh, I just love it. I treasure it. I love it. It’s like a great glass of red wine. I savor every sip and appreciate it so much.

Willie: So you crush your role as Mary in the Nativity play when you’re five years old at school. But I think it’s fair to say you got your break in Heavenly Creatures, which is 30 years old this year. And then obviously when Titanic comes out in 1997, everything changes for you. What was that moment like in your life as that became a phenomenon?

Kate: You know, it’s really interesting. I’ve only allowed myself in the last few years to talk about the fact that while there were extraordinary upsides in terms of career opportunities and role choices, in its most acute phase of Titanic-ness, it was really not much fun. I didn’t have an infrastructure that went hand in hand with being a famous person. I lived in a small two-bedroom flat in North London. I didn’t have security outside my home; I could never have afforded that. When you get such opportunities young and you’re a girl, you just shut up and be grateful. So there was a lot of, “Thank you, thank you so much,” even when I was overwhelmed.

My family, God bless them, were wonderful. But they would say, “Isn’t it exciting, darling? Oh, great, can we come, and is it OK if we invite Auntie Rita?” And I was just trying to figure out how to walk out the door without having an epileptic fit from all the paparazzi flashbulbs. Coming from a loving, nurturing, normal family, suddenly everything was abnormal, and normal life was inaccessible. I found that very traumatic, and the scrutiny was intense.

Thank God, things have changed now. I had to stand up for myself, but even when I publicly said, “Don’t have a go at me for having curves, that’s just how I am,” there was still a part of me thinking, “Do people really think I’m fat? I’m not fat; I’m just a healthy, normal person.” Having to explain myself or my shape was wrong. The fact that it doesn’t happen anymore makes me want to weep for joy. It’s great to see wonderful actresses today with a voice, playing incredible roles without having to explain themselves. They just do it. They walk onto a set and take ownership, equal to the guys. They have it, and it’s amazing to me.

Willie: Well, you had probably a role in some of that progress, which is to say that what was happening to Kate Winslet is not OK. You were a step on the ladder.

Kate: I hope in some quiet way I sifted through the rubble in the hope that maybe one day things would change. And now I can quietly say maybe I did have a little bit to do with that. I hope I did just a bit.

Willie: And it had a lot to do with the choices you made after Titanic. Is that fair to say as well?

Kate: I mean, definitely. There were phenomenal, sometimes quite big opportunities that came right away. But honestly, I felt really afraid of them. I was raised by two really great people, Roger and Sally, who were absolutely lovely and knew how to live a wholesome life without the means. I was never raised to believe that financial compensation was necessary for happiness. So that was never a driving factor for me. I was extraordinarily fortunate to have that upbringing because it meant I could take a step back and recognize, “Hang on a second. OK, I’m famous. I don’t feel like I want to be famous. Also, I’m not good enough yet. I’ve got to learn stuff, experience the anxiety of playing different roles, make mistakes, and grow.”

I didn’t want to be in the spotlight and make a mistake that could be cutthroat. I wanted to quietly step away, learn, look at the world, and be in the world. Being famous made it difficult to just be in the world with a spotlight shining so brightly in one’s face. I found that very challenging. But I’ve been able to pull back and just do my thing. And have a very private life. And my God, do I treasure that.

Willie: And you do great work. I mean, you look at your resume. There are just no misses in there. So you’ve done great.

Kate: Thank you.

Willie: I’m curious, Kate, how you assess a role at this point in your career. You’ve done so much. You’ve won every award that can be won. How do you balance the fact that you have children and all the things that go into these decisions? How do you know this is a job worth taking six months of your life?

Kate: I think for me, it’s if I read something and then can’t get it out of my head. If it stays with me, I actually read something the other day, and I can’t stop thinking about it. How would I play her, and what could I add? How can I pull it apart and put it back together again? It’s the most extraordinary privilege of my life to have earned the right to choose. I still can’t believe it. It’s not just about choosing the parts; it’s about choosing when to work or not. That part is important to me. As I’m getting older, it might not appear like it from the outside, but I’m going back to not working as much as I did when I rocketed through my thirties doing quite a lot of stuff. I just can’t do that anymore because it takes so much of me when I go to work.

Sometimes, like with Hannah Schmitz in The Reader or Lee Miller in the movie I did about her right before The Regime at the end of 2022, even if you’re traveling with your family, emotionally, you’re still leaving them a bit. You have to let them get on with it a bit, and I find that really hard. It’s easier now that my older two are older. Mia is twenty-three, and my son Joe is twenty. They have their own lives. They need me, but it’s not the same as making sure they’re exactly — like literally filling a fridge with food. They fill their own fridge, you know what I mean? There’s just a lot of consideration that goes into it. But honestly, reading a script and feeling so ignited by a role or a piece of writing or even the idea of working with a certain director, and that not being able to go away, that dog-with-a-bone feeling, that’s the thing I try to listen to. I’ve been very lucky to follow through and end up playing those roles for the most part.

Willie: It’s served you very well, I would say.

Kate: Yes, I’ve made very good choices and been very blessed.

Willie: I imagine Mare of Easttown was one of those as well. You read the first episode and said, I’m in.

Kate: Honestly, it’s only now that I can talk about Mare and not fall apart because it really messed me up coming out the other side. When you play a character carrying that level of exposure to trauma as Mare did, having experienced the loss of her son and the way she loses him, and never speaking about it — not with her mother, not with her daughter who was there the day it happened — it’s intense. The actor who played Kevin in the flashback sequences, I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I had somehow changed something inside myself to carry that level of trauma. It was awful, honestly. I kept thinking, Kate, it’s just a job. What’s the big deal? Don’t get so self-indulgent, throw it off, walk away. But I just couldn’t. It was absolutely weird.

And that’s something I’ve found happening more as I’m getting older. I don’t know if it’s hormones or just going a little softer on the inside, although I’ve always been pretty soft inside. But I couldn’t shake it off. I had to take a minute to let it leave my system. It was completely strange. I know a lot of actors have experienced that. We don’t often talk about it publicly because it makes you sound like, surely it’s just a job. Don’t you just learn your lines, go to work, and then shake it off? But sometimes the roles get a little bit stuck. It’s been fascinating talking to other performers about what it takes sometimes to come out the other side and get back to life again. It’s not always easy.

I guess that’s why I can’t do it all the time. It costs me too much sometimes, you know?

Willie: Yeah, I was going to say I’ve heard that from other actors too, that a role of that depth or if there’s trauma involved or in this case, harm to a child, it weighs on you, right? There’s a heaviness and it feels real.

Kate: Yeah, and I think the world we live in today adds to that pressure. There’s so much more pressure on teenagers now, with the fight for mental survival in the midst of smartphones and social media. Don’t even get me started; it’s unbearable. Algorithms are literally destroying an entire generation. The character of Kevin in Mare was very similar in age to my older two children, and it felt so close to home. It was a constant reminder of how fortunate I am that my two have never had social media. To this day, they have none.

Willie: Good for you. You’re a good mom.

Kate: Well, you know, it was a choice we made as parents. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to say to them, “We really don’t want you to have this.” They would say, “Oh, why? It’s not fair. That’s how everyone communicates. I’ll miss out on the party.” We told them, “If they want to invite you, they will phone you. You are a great person, a really good friend. You’re not going to miss out, I promise you.” But why? Why? Why? We get one shot at giving you a good childhood, and we don’t want to look back and regret. So that’s why. And seriously, they kind of just accepted it. There was occasional pushback. “Oh, I really want to share some of my artwork.” We’d ask, “Are you sure? If you get more dislikes than likes, how will you feel about that piece of artwork you were proud of yesterday? Think it through.” They started to decide for themselves. Now, and this is what’s fascinating, their friends are so envious of them because they have no interest in it. Their lives aren’t governed or dictated by it in any way, and they do feel grateful, which is really lovely.

Willie: And they do not spend their lives like this, which is what we tell our kids. Your head should be up in life, not down here, right? Lost in this world.

Kate: Yeah, you’re not going to find the meaning of life or any blue clouds that are better down there than they are up there.

Willie: Well said.

Kate: It’s true.

Willie: You should be a public parent spokesperson for everyone on how to handle this because it is. It’s the challenge of our time for so many parents.

Kate: Yeah, it really is. But we digress.

Willie: Just one more question about Mare, because that accent — I grew up in New Jersey. I know people from Philly who are predisposed to say, “Eh, she didn’t get it,” or “She got it. She got the accent.” Was that a hard one?

Kate: It drove me insane. I would say to Brad Inglesby, the writer, “Do you understand that I have to do this well? Not just well, but better than everyone else on this show because people are waiting for me to screw it up. People know how I sound, so I have to do it so well that it just disappears.” That was the part that was difficult — getting it into a place where, hopefully, you can’t hear me doing it. I found that difficult.

Willie: I know you have to go. I really appreciate your time. Congratulations on The Regime.

Kate: Thank you.