Kate Winslet revealed in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar U.K. that a crew member on her biographical drama “Lee” implied that she should hide her “belly rolls” on camera during the filming of one scene in which the Oscar winner wore a bathing suit. In the upcoming drama, which debuted at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Winslet stars as the famed World War II photographer and journalist Lee Miller.
“There’s a bit where Lee’s sitting on a bench in a bikini,” Winslet said. “And one of the crew came up between takes and said: ‘You might want to sit up straighter.’ So you can’t see my belly rolls? Not on your life! It was deliberate, you know?”
Winslet was then asked if she minds looking “less-than-perfect” on screen, to which she answered: “The opposite. I take pride in it because it is my life on my face, and that matters. It wouldn’t occur to me to cover that up.”
“I think people know better than to say, ‘You might wanna do something about those wrinkles’,” Winslet added. “I’m more comfortable in myself as each year passes. It enables me to allow the opinions of others to evaporate.”
Winslet also appears nude in “Lee” and told Vogue last year that she “had to be really fucking brave about letting my body be its softest version of itself and not hiding from that.”
“And believe me, people amongst our own team would say, ‘You might just want to sit up a bit.’ And I’d go, ‘Why? [Because of] the bit of flesh you can see? No, that’s the way it’s going to be!’” she added at the time.
Winslet also said that many male executives would patronize her as she was trying to get the necessary funding together to make “Lee.” The Oscar winner served as a producer on the film in addition to starring in the title role.
“The men who think you want and need their help are unbelievably outraging,” Winslet said. “I’ve even had a director say to me: ‘Listen, you do my film and I’ll get your little ‘Lee’ funded…’ Little! Or we’d have potential male investors saying things like: ‘Tell me, why am I supposed to like this woman?’”
