Kate Winslet has revealed her first intimate experiences during her teenage years were with women. Photo / Getty Images
Kate Winslet has revealed her first intimate experiences during her teenage years were with women. Photo / Getty Images
Kate Winslet has revealed that some of her first intimate experiences were with women.
While discussing Heavenly Creatures, her 1994 feature film debut, the Oscar-winning actor described herself as “curious” in her late teenage years.
Winslet, 50, played obsessive teenager Juliet Hulme in the psychological crime drama, directed by PeterJackson.
The film was based on a real murder case in 1950s New Zealand, in which two teenage girls retreated into a shared fantasy world and all-consuming friendship.
While discussing the experience of making the film at the age of 17, Winslet said: “I’ll share something I’ve never shared before. Some of my first intimate experiences as a young teen were actually with girls.
“I’d kissed a few girls, I’d kissed a few boys but I wasn’t particularly evolved in either direction.”
Speaking to the Team Deakins podcast, Winslet added: “But at that stage in my life I certainly was curious, and I think there was something about the really intense connection that those two women have that I profoundly understood.
She discussed her role in Heavenly Creatures and the intense connection between the characters.
Photo/Supplied
“I was so immediately sucked into the vortex of that world they were in that obviously became horrendously damaging to both of them. I mean, they murdered someone because they truly believed that that person was preventing them from being together.
“And whilst of course I couldn’t truly understand that part of it, I could certainly understand how influenced a young person’s mind can become by just one other person when you’re so so vulnerable.”
Winslet told the podcast, hosted by the cinematographer Roger and James Deakins, that she was “just consumed” by the role.
Winslet expressed being "at odds" with fame and described her deep immersion in acting roles.
Photo/Supplied
She said: “I know I came back a different person, because I’d evolved so much in my learning and life experience and being in that wonderful country.”
Since then, the Titanic star has been married three times, marrying the businessman Edward Abel Smith in 2012.
She was previously married to the painter and film director Jim Threapleton, with whom she has a daughter, the actress Mia Threapleton, and the British film director Sam Mendes, with whom she has a son, Joe Anders.
Winslet also told the podcast that she had always been “at odds” with fame, saying: “I’d much rather be in the shadows of the trees just making art with friends and having a great time that way.
“And the other side of the job, which is the exposure that has come hand in hand with the career that I have had, I’ve always been slightly at odds with that. I always feel as though fame kind of came and found me – I actually didn’t go searching for it, not in an ambitious way.”
Winslet, who has recently directed her first feature film, Goodbye June, also revealed that directors sometimes tell her she is a method actor but that she was “not even sure what that is”.
She said: “I just know that I have thrown myself at this job that I love and get to do and have found it more beneficial for me to be really deeply immersed in it than not, and sometimes that can be quite damaging actually.”
She cited the drama miniseries Mare of Easttown, admitting she was a “complete state” after filming it.
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