Kate Winslet Was Body-Shamed for ‘Titanic’ Ending on Door

“They were so mean,” the Oscar winner said. “I wasn’t even f**king fat.”

Kate Winslet wishes she can “turn back the clock” and clap back at the media criticism around the ending of “Titanic.”

Twenty-five years after the Oscar-winning film premiered, Winslet is revisiting the “borderline abusive” body-shaming comments she endured in the press. The 1997 film ends with Winslet as Rose surviving the sinking of the historic ship, but the long-running meme was that there was room for her beloved Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) on the floating door she was using as a raft.

“Apparently I was too fat,” Winslet said during the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast as to why she was the sole survivor of the ill-fated couple. “Why were they so mean to me? They were so mean. I wasn’t even fucking fat.”

Winslet continued, “I would have said to journalists, I would have responded, I would have said, ‘Don’t you dare treat me like this. I’m a young woman, my body is changing, I’m figuring it out, I’m deeply insecure, I’m terrified, don’t make this any harder than it already is.’ That’s bullying, you know, and actually borderline abusive, I would say.”

The Emmy and Oscar winner recently revealed that she was asked about her weight ahead of auditions during her early career in Hollywood.

“When I was younger my agent would get calls saying, ‘How’s her weight?’” Winslet told The Sunday Times, adding that she cared more “about being that actor who moves their face and has a body that jiggles.”

The “Avatar: The Way of Water” star noted that the media cycle has changed so much in recent years that tabloids are more unrelenting than ever.

“It was hard enough having the flipping News of the World on my doorstep, but that doesn’t even cut it now,” Winslet said. “That phrase about ‘today’s news being tomorrow’s fish and chip paper’ doesn’t exist.”

She continued, “The thing you did when you were drunk or foolish? It may come back to haunt you. Needing to be on one’s guard for young actors is just a different thing. It must be extraordinarily hard.”

In an interview with The Guardian in 2021, Winslet recalled how “straight-up cruel tabloid journalists were to me” as a rising star. “I was still figuring out who the hell I bloody well was! They would comment on my size, they’d estimate what I weighed, they’d print the supposed diet I was on,” Winslet said. “It was critical and horrible and so upsetting to read.”