Actress Kate Winslet has snatched a record off Tom Cruise after holding her breath for a staggering seven minutes and 15 seconds while filming Avatar: The Way Of Water.
Winslet, who plays Ronalin the newly released Avatar sequel, revealed the impressive effort came during a free-diving “bootcamp” ahead of production for keenly anticipated James Cameron’s follow-up film.
“I have the video of me surfacing saying, ‘Am I dead? Have I died?’ And then going ‘what was it?’ – straightaway I wanted to know my time. I couldn’t believe that it was 7.15 but having been told it’s 7.15 – you want to know what the next thing I say is? We need to radio set.”
The average person can hold their breath for about one-two minutes. Cruise famously managed six minutes for a stunt for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.
“I actually have a video of when I surface from that breath-hold. And the only reason I have it is because my husband snuck in,” Winslet told a global press conference ahead of the film’s December 15 launch.
“I said, ‘Please don’t come because I just don’t want you videoing. I’ll just feel pressure, just please don’t do that’ and he snuck in.”
Winslet’s effort came after four weeks of training in a diving tank in 2020, ahead of production for The Way of Water.
“It was brilliant and I was very proud of myself and I’ll probably never be able to do it again,” she said.
The 47-year-old said she was so chuffed with her effort that she “wanted James [Cameron] to know right way, that’s the first thing I wanted to do – it definitely wasn’t a competition”.
Cameron was suitably impressed. Although he qualified some differences with Winslet’s effort and Cruise’s stunt, which was reportedly shot in a single take for the 2015 Mission Impossible instalment.
“That’s static apnoea. She’s not swimming around, she’s face down, you go into a Zen trans-like state; you slow your heart rate down. She was taught how to do that,” he told Deadline.
“Active brain function uses up a lot of oxygen; swimming and moving around uses up a lot of oxygen, so you don’t get those kind of times in an actual scene.”
Winslet also told how she loved the free-diving training.
“I absolutely loved, loved, loved learning how to breath hold. Maybe that’s why I got so good at it, just because I wanted to do it all the time,” she said.
“I was so proud of myself! I did something challenging and new. But putting the skills together and performing with Sig (co-star Sigourney Weaver) at the bottom of a 15-foot (4.6-metre) tank for four minutes at a stretch was a highlight of my career.”
Weaver, who returns to the series as the biological daughter of her avatar that appeared brain-dead in the first film, was initially apprehensive about the free-diving.
But the now-73-year-old soon began spending up to six-and-a-half minutes below.
“Sigourney is part-fish; it’s pretty incredible,” another co-star, Australian Sam Worthington, said.
“These scenes are hard enough to do on dry land with all the distractions.
“They’re emotionally resonate, very difficult – and we’re crazy enough to try them underwater.”
The Way of Water sequel – which took 13 years to make – reunited Winslet and Cameron on set for the first time since the 1997 blockbuster Titanic.
It is set more than a decade after the events of the first film, which grossed nearly US$3 billion ($4.4 billion) globally and heralded a new era of 3D films and photorealistic computer-generated characters.
Avatar: The Way of Water is in cinemas now
