What to Know
The road to becoming a professional actor (and then, once you’re finally successful, life in the spotlight) is paved with all kinds of challenges, and some of them are likely related to your appearance — including people’s unsolicited opinions about it.
This is something that Kate Winslet has learned first hand, and it started at a surprisingly young age when she was fat-shamed by her drama teacher, who told her she’d need to be happy only being offered “fat girl parts” because of her weight.
Kate described herself as “stocky” as a child.
The Titanic star opened up about this part of her past during an appearance on BBC Radio 4’s show Desert Island Discs earlier this month.
“I was a little bit stocky, when I did start taking it much more seriously and got a child agent I really remember vividly a drama teacher … and she said to me, ‘Well, darling, you’ll have a career if you’re ready to settle for the fat girl parts,'” Kate said during the interview, via Deadline.
She called her drama teacher’s comments “appalling.”
It’s pretty wild to talk to anyone that way, let alone a child — a sentiment that Kate made clear in the interview.
“Look at me now. It’s appalling the things people say to children,” she said.
And when it comes to how we talk to and about adult women? Kate said that there is “so much we still have to unlearn,” not just about their bodies, but how we speak to women in the entertainment industry in general (and the level of competence some men may wrongly believe they are lacking).
“So they might say things like, ‘Don’t forget to be confident in your choices.’ And I want to sort of say, ‘Don’t talk to me about confidence,’ because if that’s one thing I haven’t ever lacked, actually, it’s exactly that,” Kate said, pointing out, “That person wouldn’t say that to a man.”
In the past, Kate has spoken out against body-shaming in the media.
During a December 2024 appearance on 60 minutes, Kate shared that she did get the chance to confront the media about the way they’ve spoken about her and her body, especially early in her career.
“I did get face to face. I let them have it. I said, ‘I hope this haunts you,'” she said at the time. “It was a great moment. It was a great moment because it wasn’t just for me, it was for all those people who were subjected to that level of harassment. It was horrific. It was really bad.”
