“I’m Doing A Job”: Kate Winslet Reacted To People Calling Her “Brave” For Embracing Her “Belly Rolls” In Her New Movie, “Lee”
Kate Winslet explained why she finds it “annoying” to be described as “brave” for embracing her natural self.
As you may have seen, Kate is currently promoting her new movie, Lee, in which she portrays Lee Miller, the acclaimed model-turned-photojournalist who was a war correspondent for Vogue magazine during World War II.
The film includes nude scenes, and last month, Kate — who’s talked openly in the past about facing scrutiny over her body — told Harper’s Bazaar that, while shooting a scene in a bikini, a crew member suggested she ought to adjust her posture to make her stomach look flatter.
“There’s a bit where Lee’s sitting on a bench in a bikini... And one of the crew came up between takes and said: ‘You might want to sit up straighter,’” she recalled. “So you can’t see my belly rolls? Not on your life! It was deliberate, you know?”
Kate emphasized that it’s incredibly important to her to present her authentic self in her movies, saying: “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.”
“I think people know better than to say, ‘You might wanna do something about those wrinkles,’” she continued. “I’m more comfortable in myself as each year passes. It enables me to allow the opinions of others to evaporate.”
And now, appearing on the Sept. 11 episode of the How To Fail podcast, Kate was asked about people describing her as “brave” for being so comfortable in her skin.
“It’s so fucking annoying,” she said while discussing the response to her comments about her bikini scene in Lee.
“Brave is going to the front line. Brave is being an NHS nurse in COVID. You know? That’s brave,” she continued. “It’s not flipping brave to go topless or have no makeup or no botox so that you can move your face around and morph it into different characters. That’s not brave. That’s just being a real person.”
“The use of this word, ‘brave’... I think it’s only because they just haven’t come up with a better word yet,” she said, suggesting that “honest” might be a better alternative.
Moreover, Kate echoed these thoughts during a subsequent interview with Time magazine when the discourse surrounding her “bravery” was raised once again.
“That’s not fucking brave,” she doubled down. “I’m not an ex-postmaster fighting for justice, I’m not in the Ukraine. I’m doing a job that matters to me.”
You can listen to Kate’s interview on How To Fail here, and this is where you can read her full Time magazine profile.
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