It also enabled the actress to act particularly authentically in her first major film role as a 19-year-old.
Kate Winslet has revealed for the first time that she had intimate encounters with girls when she was a teenager. The actress spoke about this intimate detail of her private life during an appearance on the podcast “Team Deakins”when it came to her debut role in Peter Jackson’s (well-aged) New Zealand thriller drama “Heavenly Creatures.”
We remember: Winslet played a teenager who enters into an intense, sexual relationship with a friend (Melanie Lynskey) and ultimately even becomes a murderer. Because she had already met people of both sexes at a young age, she was able to play this role without any problems, says the 50-year-old.
Winslet: “I’m going to share something I’ve never shared before. Some of my first intimate experiences as a teenager were actually with girls. I had kissed a few girls and I had kissed a few boys, but I wasn’t particularly focused in either direction.”
The actress continued: “At that time in my life, I was naturally curious, and I think there was something about the really intense connection between these two women that I therefore understood deeply. I was immediately drawn into the vortex of this world that they found themselves in, which was obviously terribly damaging to both of them, and they had great insecurities and vulnerabilities.”
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Kate Winslet has a stage gene
Kate Winslet admitted that she had never had a film script in her hand before Heavenly Creatures, but she had appeared in several British TV series and was attending drama school at the age of eleven. No wonder, because she comes from a family of actors. Her grandparents ran a theater in Reading; Her younger and older sisters can also be seen on stage and in front of the camera.
Her performance in Peter Jackson’s intense psychological fable catapulted Winslet onto the lists of casting agents, including in Hollywood. She initially confirmed her talent in her native Great Britain with “Sinn and Sensibility” (1995) and “Hearts in Turmoil” (1996), before “Titanic” famously brought her Hollywood breakthrough.
Only roles for “fat girls”?
At first she did not receive satisfactory prospects. As Winslet recently said in another interview, as a child actress she was said to be “satisfied with the roles for fat girls.”
Specifically, in an interview with BBC presenter Lauren Laverne, she said: “I was a bit of a big build when I started taking it a lot more seriously and got a child agent. I vividly remember a drama teacher… and she said to me, ‘Well, dear, you’ll have a career if you’re prepared to settle for fat girl roles’.”
Winslet continued: “Look what I’ve become. It’s shocking what people say to children.”
The unpretentious Brit has been enjoying success in the cinema for decades. Most recently, her achievements were celebrated in the film “The Photographer” and the series “The Regime”. This year she also presented her first self-directed film “Goodbye June”. Kate Winslet won an Oscar for Best Actress in 2009 for her role in The Reader. Already in 1996 she was nominated for a Golden Boy for her portrayal of Marianne Dashwood.