Kate Winslet cracks open a bottle of white wine — we are huddled in a strange little room off the lobby of a London hotel, like a walk-in wardrobe/bar. She’s in the capital for one night away from her West Sussex home and has a couple of hours to spare. That means a blizzard of conversation from the foremost British actress of her generation, a powerhouse who had her first acting job in her teens, went seismic in her twenties with Titanic, won an Oscar in her thirties (for The Reader), then in her forties gave her best performance yet in the TV show Mare of Easttown. Now she is 50 — and refreshingly for an A-lister, a chronic oversharer.
She suggests that when I write up our interview the double standards of how actors and actresses are treated means I will describe what she is wearing. “It’s automatic,” she says, gesticulating wildly because her gusto cannot be contained by a chair. I protest: I describe the clothes of everyone I meet, men and women. She arches her eyebrows. “Well then, these are men’s boots that I got in a second-hand shop in Vienna because my feet are so f***ing big.”
December is going to be busy for her. First and foremost Winslet has made her debut behind the camera with Goodbye June, a sweet, sad, funny family film about a woman (Helen Mirren) in the last days of her life — “I would say, Helen, in this bit, can you just look a bit more dead!” She is also back in the turquoise skin of Avatar: Fire and Ash, a reunion with James Cameron, the man who changed everything for her when he cast her as Rose in Titanic. She remains good friends with him and her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio — “Leo’s made me laugh so much I’ve actually wet myself.”
With Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic (1997)
20TH CENTURY FOX
Titanic was 28 years ago and became a behemoth that catapulted Winslet into the headlines. The Nineties were a tough time for women in the spotlight and much of the attention on Winslet revolved round her weight, with body shaming that left her in tears. Since then a reckoning has taken place, but I wonder what Winslet’s family — her mother Sally, a nanny, her father Roger, an actor who took other jobs when work was scarce, plus her two sisters and brother — made of her rapid rise? “Fascinated, proud, confused?” she says. “It is odd to see your sister on the front of a magazine.
“But also they were worried,” she continues, “because the media was vile, singling me out for relentless bullying. I wasn’t ready to be a famous actress. I was so young, but I felt so invaded. Nothing was nice. People climbed into my garden. I couldn’t go to a shop. I was followed when I had a baby in the back of the car on my way to the paediatrician. It is abnormal and, to my dad, I was still that little girl he helped clean out the rabbit hutch every Saturday afternoon.”
For years this treatment led Winslet to campaign for women to be happy with the way that they naturally look. “But I feel like nobody cares any more,” she says with a sigh. “No one’s listening because they’ve become obsessed with chasing an idea of perfection to get more likes on Instagram. It upsets me so much.”
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We talk about today’s trend for women, from the red carpet to your local café, to seemingly inject stuff into their faces and lips, in a manner that makes them all look rather the same. “Oh, it’s terrifying,” she says, gasping. “I think no, not you! Why?
“Some of the most beautiful women I know are over 70,” says Winslet
DAN KENNEDY
“It is devastating. If a person’s self-esteem is so bound up in how they look it’s frightening. And it’s puzzling because I have moments when I think it’s better, when I look at actresses at events dressed how they want, whichever shape — but then so many people are on weight-loss drugs. It’s so varied. Some are making choices to be themselves, others do everything they can to not be themselves. And do they know what they are putting in? The disregard for one’s health is terrifying. It bothers me now more than ever. It is f***ing chaos out there.”
Yet what really upsets Winslet is not “all the f***ing actresses” but the rest of the world, “people who save up for Botox or the shit they put in their lips”. She screws up her face, showing me lines to prove that she “hasn’t got anything in it”. She then squeezes the backs of her hands, making creases around her veins. “My favourite thing is when your hands get old,” she beams. “That’s life, in your hands. Some of the most beautiful women I know are over 70 and what upsets me is that young women have no concept of what being beautiful actually is.”
What can be done? She cites the Goodbye June stars Mirren, Toni Collette and Andrea Riseborough, as well her Avatar co-star Sigourney Weaver as women who, like her, are trying to redress the balance. “We have to keep being real.”
Winslet and Helen Mirren in Goodbye June
KIMBERLEY FRENCH/NETFLIX
To illustrate her exasperation she mentions a young woman she saw on a BBC news article about a car crash. “She looked like a cartoon,” Winslet says, sighing. “You do not actually know what that person looks like — from the eyebrows to mouth to lashes to hair, that young woman is scared to be herself. What idea of perfection are people aspiring to? I blame social media and its effect on mental health.”
People often ask her how, as a famous person, she still takes the Tube, but the reason why is simple — nobody is looking up from their phones. “It’s heartbreaking,” she says. “Nobody’s looking into the f***ing world any more.”
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Winslet was born in Reading in 1975. She says that because she “speaks well” people think she is “well-educated, well-read, well this, well that”, but says that her family actually “struggled like hell” and the house she grew up in “was a slither of a building on a terrace — with takeaways, cobblers and the Co-op”.
In 2017 her mother died of ovarian cancer and it is partly in her honour that Winslet has decided to take a first step behind the camera, for Goodbye June. It is not, she insists, Sally’s story, but given that June dies of cancer while her large family (Winslet plays one of her daughters) gather round, the echoes were deafening.
“There were days when I thought, ‘Oh, I’m living through it again,’” she says, adding that due to her own experience she was desperate to get the tone right. “I had to get across the monotony that comes when somebody has cancer for a long time. You become numb. I’ve gone through those glimmers of hope that are then dashed. People say, ‘There’s a new chemo …’, or, ‘There is a trial …’ You get angry, then hopeful, then sad and then hopeful again. And then you just plateau.”
Goodbye June is a beautiful film, set at Christmas time — it reminded me of Mike Leigh at his most human and its script is tender, playful and very British. “I love British culture,” Winslet says. “How in moments of unbelievable tragedy there’s always someone asking if they can have a pint and a packet of pork scratchings.” Football, pubs, sandwiches, “crappy” hospital sofas, kind doctors — it flows with the rhythm of this country’s life as it celebrates the ending of a life.
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“I suppose this film is our way of saying, ‘Make sure you’ve said everything you need to,’” Winslet says. “Because this country is useless at dealing with grief. All we know is that someone dies and you bury them in a mahogany box or they’re cremated. There’s no sense of ceremony about seeing someone off.” She gives a heavy shake of the head. “But some people just die,” she says, aghast. “I know somebody who held her dying mother and screamed, ‘No, not now!’ I mean, hell.”
With her parents, Sally Bridges-Winslet and Roger Winslet, in 2009
DAVE HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES
When Sally died the actress spent days by her side in hospital — as did her children. Back then, her first two, Mia and Joe, were teenagers, with her third child, Bear, whose father is her husband, Edward “formerly Ned Rocknroll” Smith, just three.
“I remember,” Winslet continues. “My mum was in tears one minute and then turned to Mia and said, ‘I lost so much weight that I had to get new bras, but I won’t need them now, will I? You should have them.’” Winslet guffaws. “She’d put them in her bag! And of course my daughter had to take the f***ing bras! As soon as we left, she said, ‘Mum, I don’t think I’ll be able to wear them.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry, darling, we’ll talk about it later.’”
Goodbye June is written by Joe, Winslet’s eldest son, whose father is Sam Mendes. Now 22, he goes by the surname Anders, a name from deep in the roots of Winslet’s family tree. A few years ago he took a spot on a screenwriting course at the National Film and Television School, where he wrote this film. He told his mum it was “inspired by what happened when Nana died”.
With her son, Joe Anders in Los Angeles last month
TOMMASO BODDI/GETTY IMAGES
“He’s very shy, Joe,” Winslet says. “He would be happy to just float around writing poems in the shadows of trees, but something is happening to my kid.” As well as having his debut picked up by Netflix, he is acting too — he has two TV shows next year, East of Eden and Cape Fear. Which, of course, is similar to his sister Mia, Winslet’s daughter with her first husband, Jim Threapleton. Mia’s film career had a breakthrough year with her lead in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme.
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She is terrific in that, while Anders’s script for Goodbye June shows a knack for detail. However, this is the era of the nepo baby, when all children of the successful are accused of having more luck than talent. “Look,” Winslet says, shrugging, “my children have their own thing going on. I didn’t teach them how to act and I’m not a writer.” Yet surely Anders is aware of a spotlight? “It’s definitely something he feels,” Winslet admits.
“Joe would never want anybody to think the film only got made because of his mum. But I’ve said to both many times that people will say whatever they want — it doesn’t matter. As a mum all one wants for their children is for them to be happy and there was no way I could discourage either of them from wanting to follow this path.”
We end at the hotel reception, long into the night. She really is a whirlwind of a woman: funny and frank, so in control I assume she always wanted to direct. “I really didn’t,” she says. “As director, you do not draw breath and I have been raising a family.” She frowns.
“Also, there is an inbuilt assumption that when actresses become directors they’re not really doing it — that they have help. They never say that about a man. But I had to feel like I was tough enough to withstand whatever assumptions might come my way.” What changed? What made her take the leap? “Well, I got closer to 50 and just didn’t give a f***.”
Goodbye June is in cinemas from Dec 12 and on Netflix from Dec 24
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