Kate Winslet Was Asked to Cover Her ‘Belly Rolls’ While Filming Bikini Scene
In a new interview, Kate Winslet revealed that she was body-shamed during the filming of her new historical drama Lee.
The iconic actress told Harper's Bazaar UK that while filming a bikini scene for the World War II film, she was told to cover up her "belly rolls."
The film follows British Vogue photographer Lee Miller who becomes a photojournalist shooting the frontlines of the war.
"There’s a bit where Lee’s sitting on a bench in a bikini… 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 shared.
READ MORE: Kate Winslet Says She Was Told to Settle for 'Fat Girl' Roles
"It is my life on my face, and that matters. It wouldn’t occur to me to cover that up," she continued.
"I think people know better than to say, 'You might wanna do something about those wrinkles' … I’m more comfortable in myself as each year passes. It enables me to allow the opinions of others to evaporate," she said.
She also revealed that she stopped exercising before filming Lee, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year.
This isn't the first time that Winslet has criticized the film industry for body-shaming.
In 2022, she revealed that as a young actress in the '90s, she was told to settle for "fat girl roles" and said that her agent "would get calls saying, 'How's her weight?' I kid you not."
Winslet also faced intense scrutiny of her body image after the release of 1997's Titanic, which she reflected on in an interview with The Guardian in 2021.
"It was almost laughable how shocking, how critical, how straight-up cruel tabloid journalists were to me. I was still figuring out who the hell I bloody well was!" she said.
Entertainment Weekly also reported that in 2003 Winslet slammed GQ for "digitally altering" her appearance on the cover.
"I do not look like that and more importantly I don’t desire to look like that. I actually have a Polaroid that the photographer gave me on the day of the shoot… I can tell you they’ve reduced the size of my legs by about a third. For my money it looks pretty good the way it was taken," she said at the time.
The outlet also noted that Winslet had a stipulation in her 2015 L'Oreal contract for her Lancôme ads that said that they were not allowed to photoshop her appearance.
"I do think we have a responsibility to the younger generation of women. I would always want to be telling the truth about who I am to that generation because they’ve got to have strong leaders," she declared.
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Gallery Credit: Jason Kessler