Kate Winslet is not afraid to be herself in Hollywood.
Winslet, 48, opened up to Hoda Kotb on the Today show about staying true to her identity after more than two decades in the spotlight.
“You know, it’s really interesting how much [the industry] has changed,” she told Kotb, 59, on Monday, February 26, while promoting her new HBO series, The Regime. “And I think about the moments I did have to kind of say, ‘Well, look, I’m going to be myself and I have curves and this is who I am.’”
The Titanic actress recalled how the business operated while she was still a rising star, noting that there was “a lot of fat-shaming that would go on back in the day.”
“That has changed,” she said, adding that younger generations of women are “born with” more courage. “They have a voice. They’re learning how to hang on it. They stand up for themselves. They know that they matter. They count for something,” she explained. “They’re great together. It’s an exciting time for younger actresses to be coming into an industry like this one — which is huge — but to feel held, supported, nurtured. It’s changed so much. It’s wonderful.”
Winslet went on to discuss her appearance in a 2022 L’Oréal Paris commercial, which served as a message for women “to believe in themselves from the inside.”
“It’s not about the makeup and the beauty and how much time it takes to put things on,” she continued. “It’s about who you are on the inside and learning to be at peace with that and being OK with that. I think acceptance and representation is absolutely key for women today. So it was important for me to come up with something that felt different, felt refreshing, felt real.”
Winslet was shot to stardom at age 22 following the Titanic boom, but she recently admitted navigating her newfound fame wasn’t easy.
“I felt like I had to look a certain way, or be a certain thing,” she told Porter in an interview published earlier this month. “And because media intrusion was so significant at that time, my life was quite unpleasant.”
She continued: “Journalists would always say, ‘After Titanic, you could have done anything and yet you chose to do these small things’… and I was like, ‘Yeah, you bet your f—kin’ life I did! Because, guess what, being famous was horrible.’” I was grateful, of course. I was in my early 20s, and I was able to get a flat. But I didn’t want to be followed literally feeding the ducks.”
Despite the frenzy that came with the film’s success, Winslet knows Titanic “continues to bring people huge amounts of joy,” joking, “The only time I am like, ‘Oh god, hide,’ is if we are on a boat somewhere.”
