Kate Winslet almost became an A-list celebrity overnight after her role in Titanic. But she felt her passion for acting may have been compromised as a result of her newfound stardom.
Kate Winslet wished she had support during her ‘Titanic’ fame
Winslet once confided that the amount of attention she received from Titanic was a bit difficult to navigate through. At the time, she wasn’t even living in Hollywood, but instead had a modest lifestyle in London. But the attention of her newfound stardom quickly began to influence her regular way of life.
“It isn’t easy going through that level of exposure so quickly. What I do wish is that I had had more support going through those early days. It’s genuinely difficult. I was living in my lovely little two-bedroom flat in north London… and suddenly I couldn’t just walk down the street and buy a pint of milk,” she once said in an interview with Radio 4 (via Her).
Winslet felt she could’ve benefitted from having a support team to help her navigate through the challenges of celebrity. Similarly to what many modern stars are given today.
“With things changing overnight, I wish I had known people who could have said ‘this is what’s going to happen’. I wish I’d known more people who had actually gone through that. It’s a shocker, that one. It’s like having 55 babies naturally in quick succession,” she said.
Kate Winslet lost faith in acting after doing ‘Titanic’
Winslet knew that Titanic was set to be the biggest film of her career. But perhaps a younger Winslet underestimated at the time what that might have meant for her life.
“I wasn’t living in Hollywood,” Winslet once told The Hollywood Reporter. “I was living in north London in an apartment with a friend of mine. So in a way, navigating the way after Titanic was hard, and I’d like to think that I handled it in a way that was true to me.”
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Professionally, Winslet handled it by starring in smaller projects like Hideous Kinky. This was because her stardom was starting to clash with Winslet’s own identity.
“It sounds terrible to say that, but I didn’t like this being suddenly famous thing of being told that I had to be one thing, or another, or be thinner, or be more this or less that. I didn’t feel like myself,” she said.
Apart from that, the attention from Titanic also left Winslet questioning her passion for acting in the first place.
“I had really lost faith in acting after the whole Titanic experience. Instead of acting, my job was to be a hot young movie star. Suddenly I was on the cover of The Face and GQ. Other people were telling me who I was, and I was like, ‘What do you mean I’m hot? I’m not hot. I have a big ass.’” she once recalled to Index.
What Kate Winslet loved about acting
Much of navigating herself after her Titanic success was relearning what Winslet appreciated about acting in the first place. From childhood, acting allowed the Oscar-winner to tap into and release a range of emotions. And it was a place she strived to get back to after Titanic.
“Part of it is good, old-fashioned showing off, like I used to do when I was five. Also, it’s nice to be so emotionally indulgent, to wallow in your own emotional horses*** for twelve weeks while you’re shooting. But it’s also an attempt to overcome your fears about yourself or to deal with a particularly daunting emotion,” she said.
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