If there is one thing we love about Kate Winslet, it’s her persistence when it comes to calling out the body shaming she faced early in her career.

The actor, who played young socialite Rose DeWitt Bukater in the blockbuster film Titanic, was just 19 when she landed the part and was subjected to intense scrutiny from viewers and the press who criticised the star’s body – something she says was “borderline abusive”.

“Apparently I was too fat. Isn’t it awful? Why were they so mean to me? They were so mean. I wasn’t even fucking fat,” she said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.

The Oscar winner added that if she could go back in time to address the comments made about her back then, there is one thing she wishes she would’ve said.

“If I could turn back the clock, I would have used my voice in a completely different way. I would have said to journalists, I would have responded, I would have said, ‘Don’t you dare treat me like this. I’m a young woman, my body is changing, I’m figuring it out, I’m deeply insecure, I’m terrified, don’t make this any harder than it already is.’

“That’s bullying, you know, and actually borderline abusive, I would say.”

Winslet also discussed what it was like to become famous during that time and the major impact it had on both her career and personal life.

“I was never a very good famous person, I wasn’t ready to be a famous person and somehow I was so fortunate because I instinctively knew that at the time and resisted it,” she says.

“It was really scary to become that famous that quickly all of a sudden, and truly my life went from being able to just roam around make-up-free, going to buy a pint of milk and the newspaper across the road to suddenly that was an abnormal activity, because I was literally surrounded by press, just walking across the street.

“I was so young experiencing life as an independent adult and learning who I was as an actor. I still had so much to learn and I was not trained, which is a common misconception that I had all these years of heavy, important British training, but I left school at 16 and got lucky.”

The actor also shared that while being a young actor in the 90s was challenging, she feels it’s increasingly difficult for young stars now.

“I think being a young famous person is almost impossible to navigate. I just absolutely couldn’t imagine it [fame and social media],” she says. “It’s a whole other world and I’m so lucky, I don’t have social media so it’s not a case of having to switch it off because I never even switched it on.

Winslet added that this is further intensified because “every actor is insecure” on some level.

“I don’t know a single actor, no matter how old they are, how many years they’ve been doing it, who says, ‘Yes, I like myself,”” she shares.

“It’s just how we are wired to think we’re not good half the time… so much of acting is rejection, especially when you’re young and starting out and that’s the hard part is having the resilience [to] push through and decide whether you love it enough to keep getting the knockbacks and just keep going forward.”

Images: Getty