LOS ANGELES: Actress Kate Winslet has revealed she was not prepared for the kind of added attention she got after 'Titanic'.
The 1997 film directed by James Cameron became a box-office hit and made Kate and her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio megastars.
“I felt like I had to look a certain way, or be a certain thing, and because media intrusion was so significant at that time, my life was quite unpleasant, ” Kate told Porter Magazine, deadline.com.
The actress added: “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***in’ life I did! Because, guess what, being famous was horrible.'”
“I was grateful, of course. I was in my early twenties, and I was able to get a flat. But I didn’t want to be followed literally feeding the ducks.”
At 48 years old now, Kate says the word fame is “ridiculous” and doesn’t consider it a “burden” anymore.
“(Titanic) continues to bring people huge amounts of joy, ” she notes. “The only time I am like, ‘Oh god, hide’, is if we are on a boat somewhere.”
Kate has been open about her struggles with the media in her 20s, which made her self-conscious about her body.
In an interview published by Vogue in September 2023, Kate talked about why she had to be brave to film a topless scene for the film Lee.
“I had to be really f*cking brave about letting my body be its softest version of itself and not hiding from that, ” she told the publication.
Kate said it all “stems from having been subjected to the most awful scrutiny and judgment, and, actually, I would go so far as to say bullying, from mainstream media when I was in my 20s.”