Kate Winslet recalls being body-shamed after famous Titanic scene: ‘They were so mean, I wasn’t even fat’

Kate Winslet is opening up about the mean and ‘borderline abusive’ comments she received early in her career. Talking about that persisting question of whether her character Rose could have saved Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) by helping him get on the floating door with her at the end of Titanic, and saved him from freezing to death, Kate said in a recent interview that people were ‘mean to her’. The actor recalled the media fixation with her weight as she appeared on a podcast. (Also read: Kate Winslet recalls how her agent got demeaning calls when she was a young actor: ‘How’s her weight?’)

The actor, who earned an Academy Award nomination for playing Rose in Titanic, has been vocal about the cruel treatment from the media and how it made her upset to read it at such a young age when she was still figuring out as an actor in the industry.

“Apparently, I was too fat… Isn’t it awful? Why were they so mean to me? They were so mean. I wasn’t even f**ing fat… If I could turn back the clock, I would have used my voice in a completely different way… I would have said to journalists, I would have responded, I would have said, ‘Don’t you dare treat me like this. I’m a young woman, my body is changing, I’m figuring it out, I’m deeply insecure, I’m terrified, don’t make this any harder than it already is.’ That’s bullying, you know, and actually borderline abusive, I would say,” Kate said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast ahead of the film’s 25th anniversary.

The actor was last seen in Titanic director James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, where she held her breath underwater for seven minutes and 15 seconds, beating the previous record held by Tom Cruise. Avatar sees Kate join the cast as a new character named Ronal alongside actors Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver for the sequel. The film released in theatres worldwide on December 16.