10 Things You Didn’t Know About Kate Winslet

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9. Bullied as a Teenager

She has been open about her experience with bullying in high school and the fact that she was considerably overweight as a teenager. At the age of 16, she was 5’6 1/2 and weighed 185 pounds. Her classmates used to call her “blubber” and she was teased relentlessly because of how she looked. “I was chubby, always had big feet, the wrong shoes, bad hair,” she said. “When I grew up, I never heard positive reinforcement about body image from any female in my life. I only heard negatives. That’s very damaging, because then you’re programmed as a young woman to immediately scrutinize yourself and how you look,” she said while filming Running Wild with Bear Grylls. Kate eventually lost the weight because she knew it would affect her career, but she now makes a point to praise her naturally curvy body. She also dished out that after finding success as an Oscar wining actress she sought out the girl who was particularly mean to her and confronted her. “She was working on a beauty counter in a department store. I went up to her and said, ‘I want to thank you for being such a b-tch because it made me a lot stronger,” said Winslet. Now that would be gratifying!

Source: hellomagazine.com

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8. Her First Love

Kate Winslet became an international star at the age of 21 when she appeared alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the widely popular James Cameron film, Titanic, but her success and happiness was tainted with the loss of her first love. She received her second Oscar nomination for her performance in the movie, but secretly behind closed doors she was mourning the loss of Stephen Tredre, who passed away from bone cancer. She skipped premiere to attend his funeral in London. In an interview with Good Housekeeping she said, “I think heartbreak is something that you learn to live with as opposed to learn to forget. And I would never want to forget anything that I’ve experienced. It’s part of life, and it’s a part of who I am. But I don’t believe in regretting anything either. I’m not a person who harbors regret or has one foot in the past. I’m very much a forward thinker, and I’m quite positive.”

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7. She’s Against Photoshop

Kate Winslet is no stranger to posing in front of the camera, but unlike other celebrities, she has a strict no photoshopping rule. In 2003 she made her stance on it very clear when she called out British GQ for using photoshop to make her look skinnier than she was. Afterwards, she released a statement that said: “I do not look like that and more importantly, I don’t desire to look like that. People don’t really look like that. In films I might look glamorous, but I’ve been in hair and makeup for two hours.” In 2007 she sued a British magazine for libel damages and won when they claimed she saw a diet specialist. When she became the face of L’Oreal, she made a point to include in her contract that they were not allowed airbrush any pictures of her. In 2015 she publicly stated that she wanted to portray a more realistic standard of beauty. “I can only ever speak for myself, and I can only ever do things that are important to me, and it’s a hope that other people might follow suit,” she said. She has also stated that she doesn’t allow any magazines in her home.

Justin Bishop/Vanity Fair

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6. Breaking Records

Kate Winslet holds the record as the youngest actress to ever receive seven Academy Award nominations. Winslet received her first Academy Award nomination when she was only 19 for her performance in Sense and Sensibility. She surpassed Bette Davis when she got her sixth nomination for her role in The Reader and then got her seventh nomination just recently for her performance in Steve Jobs. She expressed an immense amount of excitement when she joined the five-nomination club alongside actresses like Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Cate Blanchett, Susan Sarandon and Glenn Close, so we can only imagine how she feels now! “I remember when somebody told me [about the record]; I did allow myself a serious fist-punching-in-the-air moment. By myself in the apartment, you know, just leaping around and screaming and going, ‘F-ck yeah!’ This wasn’t supposed to happen to somebody like me. I’m not the pedigree kid. I’m not classically trained. I didn’t come from the fancy home,” said Winslet.

Rex Features

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5. Gold Ring

It’s no secret that Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are close friends. Their friendship started back when they starred in Titanic together and have remained close ever since. The two joined forces again in 2008 for the movie Revolutionary Road which was directed by her then-husband, Sam Mendes. During that time, DiCaprio gave Winslet a friendship ring which she claims she cannot leave her flat without. The gold band is inscribed with a message, but she has never shared what that message is. “It’s engraved on the inside, but I’m not going to tell you what it says.” The ring raised some eyebrows because she would wear it on a certain important finger. In 2012, three years after filming Revolutionary Road, Leonardo DiCaprio walked Winslet down the aisle when she married Ned Rocknroll. He’s played an important part in her life and her children now refer to DiCaprio as “Uncle Leo.”

Broadimage/REX/Shutterstock

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4. She’s Banned Social Media

This kind of goes hand in hand with the fact that Winslet doesn’t allow magazines in her home — she also doesn’t allow her children to take part in social media. Despite playing a role in the tech-savvy Apple movie, Steve Jobs, Kate runs a household that is strict about limited use of technology. She told the UK Sunday Times that she believes social media causes self-esteem issues and even worse problems down the line. Taking pictures and posting them for the gratification of strangers is something she just can’t wrap her head around. Her daughter, Mia, who will be 16 this year asked if she could have access to Instagram, but Kate said no. “[This has] a huge impact on young women’s self-esteem because all they will ever do is design themselves for people to like them. And what comes with that? Eating disorders,” she said. Winslet also believes there’s a sense of privacy that is being violated “the second you share that memory, that’s not your memory anymore. You’ve given it away.”

Gregory Pace/BEI/Shutterstock

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3. She Can Sing

Not only can Kate Winslet act, but she’s also an incredible singer! She recorded a song for the soundtrack of the movie Christmas Carol: The Movie in 2001 when she was only 26-years-old. The song was so good that producers decided to release it as a single called “What If” and it was extremely well received. It rose to the top of the charts peaking at number 6 in the UK. To add to this accomplishment she also won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children in 2000 for lending her voice to Listen to the Storyteller.

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2. Ned Rocknroll and Bear

She met her third husband, Ned Rocknroll, who’s real name is Ned Abel Smith while vacationing at Virgin Group billionaire Richard Branson’s Caribbean-island home. While they were there, the house caught on fire! After going through this crazy cinematic experience, Ned wooed Kate and the two eventually got married in 2012. In 2013 they welcomed Bear, Kate’s third child and first with Ned. In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Winslet talked about how they settled on their son’s unusual name: “We were thinking about names during the pregnancy…We settled on Bear quite early on because a friend of mine when I was younger was nicknamed Bear and I had just always really loved it….Bear’s second name is Blaze because my husband and I met in a house fire actually!” She also mentioned that Bear’s last name is Winslet and not Rocknroll…for obvious reasons!

Reuters

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1. Feeling Like Less of a Mother

When she gave birth to her daughter Mia, she had to have a Cesarean section which she has said made her feel like less of a mother, so she hid it from the public. It wasn’t until she gave birth naturally to her second child, Joe, that she spoke openly about it. “I’ve never talked about this. I’ve actually gone to great pains to cover it up. But Mia was an emergency C-section. I just said that I had a natural birth because I was so completely traumatized by the fact that I hadn’t given birth. I felt like a complete failure. My whole life, I’d been told I had great childbearing hips. There’s this thing amongst women in the world that if you can handle childbirth, you can handle anything. I had never handled childbirth, and I felt like, in some way that I couldn’t join that ‘powerful women’s club,'” she said.

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Katherine G

Katherine is the Managing Editor for Health and Parenting, but she has a soft spot for entertainment. She loves binging shows on Netflix, reality TV is a guilty pleasure, and country music is her go-to playlist. When she's not writing, she's spending time outdoors, especially with her puppy Zoey!