At age 50, Kate Winslet is currently celebrating and promoting her directorial debut, the emotional Christmas-set family drama Goodbye June, in which she also co-stars opposite Toni Collette and Helen Mirren. (It’ll be available to stream on Christmas Eve via Netflix subscription.) But if one were to go back in time 35-40 years ago, they might stumble across the point when the now-esteemed actress was body-shamed by both classmates and a particular drama teacher who doubted Winslet’s chances of achieving success.
While speaking on the Desert Islands Discs podcast about the complications and challenges of directing while also being the lead actress in a movie, Winslet reflected on her grade school years and addressed the awful way she was treated by peers young and old. As she put it:
I was a little bit stocky, when I did start taking it much more seriously and got a child agent, I really remember vividly a drama teacher … and she said to me, ‘Well, darling, you’ll have a career if you’re ready to settle for the fat girl parts.’ Look at me now. It’s appalling the things people say to children.
Sure, it'd be taking the moral high ground to assume that the drama teacher fumbled her words and didn't actually mean to flat-out call a young student fat to her face, but it doesn't sound like Winslet thinks that route is worthy of anyone's travels. It sounds like she never quite lost the edge of her grudge against the woman, and seemingly for good reason.
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I can't imagine my own reactions if my English teacher had told me I'd be a great writer if I was ready to settle for "fat boy articles." I mean, obviously an entirely different situation on all fronts, but no less disrespectful.
Winslet pointedly called out many of those that she went to school with during that era, saying:
You lot who were in my year at school, you were bloody horrible to me, and you should be ashamed of yourselves!
Obviously Kate Winslet is far from being the only child actor who faced criticisms and harsh comments from adults in her sphere, and that kind of pronounced attention can be a stressful factor that often leads to one form of addiction or another. Thankfully, Winslet doesn't appear to have gone too far down any dark avenues during her teen years, although she faced an even wider and more vicious wave of callousness after Titanic turned her into a global superstar.
The Holiday vet also addressed that second era of weight-focused attention from tabloids and photographers, saying:
My whole world was totally turned upside down. I have so much to be grateful for. But I wasn’t in a particularly good place around my physical self at all. . . . They started calling me awful, terrible, actually abusive names… going through my bins to look for my shopping receipts, to figure out what diet I was on or wasn’t on. It was an utter disgrace.
The late '90s were definitely the rock bottom for the paparazzi, and it took years for the public to understand the full context of how such widely reported negativity and constant attention could have an equally negative effect on those being targeted, from Princess Di to Britney Spears to Winslet herself. Not that everything has become so ideal in the meantime, but the farther away we get from the "digging through celebs' trash" era, the better we'll be as a society.
Fans can watch Goodbye June, which was written by Winslet's son Joe Anders (and which sparked a nepo baby debate) on Netflix starting on Wednesday, December 24.
