While filming Titanic in her early 20s, Winslet wasn’t in a “particularly good shape” mentally around her body, she said.
Though the experience of making the film was incredible, she said, her world was “totally turned upside down” once it hit cinemas.
“I wasn’t ready for that world,” she said.
She said she had received negative comments about her appearance from a young age, recalling being nicknamed “blubber” by her peers at primary school as a child, and later being told she would have to “settle for the fat girl parts” if she wanted to be an actor by a drama teacher.
From the ages of 15 to 19, she said she was “on and off” dieting, “barely eating” by the end.
“It was really unhealthy,” she said.
Once Titanic was released, she began to see herself on the cover of newspapers and magazines, often accompanied by what she described as “awful, terrible, actually abusive names”.
“It was horrific. There were people tapping my phone. They were just everywhere. And I was just on my own. I was terrified to go to sleep,” she said.
Support from friends and those close to her was part of how she dealt with it then – including from a neighbouring couple who would leave her a “bowl of steaming pasta and a little glass of red wine” on the garden wall between their houses.