With an Oscar and multiple Academy Awards, Emmys and Baftas under her belt, there’s no doubt that Kate Winslet is one of the most celebrated and beloved actors of a generation.

But in a new interview, the 47-year-old recalled a moment from earlier in her 25-year career when she was told to accept that she would be typecast because of her weight.

“It can be extremely negative,” she told The Sunday Times about being body shamed within the industry. “People are subject to scrutiny that is more than a young, vulnerable person can cope with.”

Winslet said that she was told to settle for “fat girl” parts when she was a young performer in acting school, and it didn’t get much better once she came to Hollywood. Even when she started booking big-screen roles, her agent was often asked: “How’s her weight?”

“But in the film industry it is really changing. When I was younger my agent would get calls saying, ‘How’s her weight?’ I kid you not. So it’s heartwarming that this has started to change,” she explained. 

Winslet has long been outspoken against Hollywood pressures put on women to be a certain size and beauty standard on screen. Back in 2021, she shared the mental impact of the public scrutiny of her body that she faced after the release of Titanic back in 1997, calling it “horrible and so upsetting.”

“In my 20s, people would talk about my weight a lot,” she told the Guardian. “I would be called to comment on my physical self. Then I got this label of being ballsy and outspoken. No, I was just defending myself.”

In her recent role in HBO’s Mare Of Easttown, Winslet was adamant that her body wouldn’t be altered, after it was brought to her attention by director Craig Zobel that her “bulgy bit of belly” could be removed from a sex scene.

“Listen, I hope that in playing Mare as a middle-aged woman… I guess that’s why people have connected with this character in the way that they have done because there are clearly no filters,” she told The New York Times.

“She’s a fully functioning, flawed woman with a body and a face that moves in a way that is synonymous with her age and her life and where she comes from.”

Images: Getty