Kate Winslet is now an ambassador for The King’s Foundation, King Charles’s charity.Long before that, the actress met the-then Prince of Wales for the first time in February 1996, when she was just 20 years old.She told Jimmy Kimmel on the November 18 episode of his show that she met the royal wearing a “transparent lace outfit.”
If Kate Winslet could meet King Charles for the first time all over again, she might go with an outfit that maybe wasn’t so—transparent.
The actress was on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on November 18 and spoke to the host about meeting the future king—then Prince Charles—while wearing a “transparent lace outfit” to the premiere of the 1996 film Sense and Sensibility.
Kate Winslet at the ‘Sense and Sensibility’ premiere in February 1996.
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“The first time I met him—oh my goodness,” Winslet said on Tuesday. “He had come to support the royal premiere of Sense and Sensibility when I was 20. I sort of hadn’t realized we were really going to meet him. So I forgot about the fact that I really was wearing a kind of transparent lace outfit.”
“And thank God I’d worn a coat because, as he’s making his way toward me, I’m like, ‘Nipples! Nipples! Nipples!’ Oh my God,” she continued. “And then someone just went, ‘Coat!’ and [I covered myself] and went, ‘Your Majesty.’”
Kate Winslet in February 1996.
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Kate Winslet putting her coat on at the premiere.
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Since then, Winslet has met the King several times—including this past June at St. James’s Palace alongside Meryl Streep and David Beckham—and was even asked to become one of the ambassadors for The King’s Foundation, Charles’s educational charity. Calling him “really an extraordinary man,” Winslet said, “He’s very, very kind and extremely empathetic and very, very generous.”
Prince Charles at the ‘Sense and Sensibility’ premiere in February 1996.
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Winslet told Kimmel about her encounter with the King this summer alongside Streep, saying, “There was a conversation about this. So Meryl and I, as we were walking to meet the King, she says to me, ‘Do you think we have to curtsy?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely, we have to curtsy.’ She was like, ‘Okay, is it, like, a big curtsy? What do we do?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. We’ll just make the motion.’ She was like, ‘I don’t know if we need to do that.’ There was a big panic. We didn’t know what the form was.”
“Obviously, we had to curtsy,” Winslet continued. “Did I go first? I think I did. But then I’m always trying to volunteer to go first because I feel like leadership is important and someone has to get it wrong, and it’s usually me that does, so I don’t mind taking the hit.”
King Charles, David Beckham, Meryl Streep, and Kate Winslet.
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Winslet said she was “delighted” to become an ambassador for The King’s Foundation, and she’ll have another chance to rub shoulders with royalty on December 5, when she is a guest of honor at Kate Middleton’s annual Christmas carol concert at Westminster Abbey.