Kate Winslet Says Female Actors Showing Their Bodies and Not Wearing Makeup on Camera Is ‘Not F—ing Brave: ‘I’m Not in the Ukraine. I’m Doing a Job’
Kate Winslet recently told Time magazine that it’s not brave when female actors show their bodies or don’t wear makeup on camera. It’s just their job to portray real women. The Oscar winner has been making the press rounds in support of her new movie “Lee,” in which she plays famed World War II photographer and journalist Lee Miller. Winslet has nude scenes in the film and was adamant about showing her real body on screen.
“That’s not fucking brave,” Winlset told Time. “I’m not an ex-postmaster fighting for justice. I’m not in the Ukraine. I’m doing a job that matters to me.”
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Winslet told Harper’s Bazaar U.K. earlier this year that a crew member on the “Lee” set implied that she should hide her “belly rolls” on camera during the filming of one scene in which she wore a bathing suit. Winslet promptly shut the request down.
“There’s a bit where Lee’s sitting on a bench in a bikini,” Winslet said. “And one of the crew came up between takes and said: ‘You might want to sit up straighter.’ So you can’t see my belly rolls? Not on your life! It was deliberate, you know?”
Winslet was then asked in the same interview if she minds looking “less-than-perfect” on screen, to which she answered: “The opposite. I take pride in it because it is my life on my face, and that matters. It wouldn’t occur to me to cover that up.”
“People know better than to say, ‘You might wanna do something about those wrinkles’,” Winslet added. “I’m more comfortable in myself as each year passes. It enables me to allow the opinions of others to evaporate.”
During her press tour for “Mare of Easttown,” Winslet often said that dolling herself up on camera with makeup and nice clothes would have been a disservice to her character. She told IndieWire at the time that it was important to make Mare “kind of disgusting” on screen, but that also wasn’t a brave choice.
“She’s a hot mess most of the time, she doesn’t give a shit what she looks like, she’s kind of stopped caring what people even think about her,” Winslet said. “We made decisions creatively that this was a woman who looked at herself in the mirror when she brushed her teeth in the morning and would not look in the mirror again [all day]. That’s just who she is. That’s like most busy mothers I know — that’s like me. It really is.”
“Lee” is set to open in theaters on September 27.
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