Kate Winslet takes a stand on body positivity. (Photo: Bang ShowBiz)
Kate Winslet, the Oscar-winning British actress, took a firm stand for body positivity in a nude scene on her hit show “Mare of Easttown.”
Director Craig Zobel told Winslet he wanted to digitally trim “a bulgy bit of belly fat” from her body for the sex scene. But the 45-year-old actress was adamant–no filters.
She refused allow her appearance to be edited on the show or in any promotional content.
Kate wanted her character, police detective Marianne “Mare” Sheehan to look like a real middle-aged woman because there are already too many filtered and edited images out in the world.
“Listen, I hope that in playing Mare as a middle-aged woman — I will be 46 in October — I guess that’s why people have connected with this character in the way that they have done because there are clearly no filters,” she explained.
“She’s a fully functioning, flawed woman with a body and a face that moves in a way that is synonymous with her age and her life and where she comes from. I think we’re starved of that a bit.”
Winslet has never shied away from a movie nude scene, if it’s appropriate for the plot. She won a best actress Oscar for her role in the 208’s “The Reader,” and it involved substantial nudity.
In the 1997 mega-hit, “Titanic” she appeared topless in two scenes.
One such scene, in the back of a car with Leonardo DiCaprio is considered one of the steamiest sex scenes of all time.
It’s safe to say she’s comfortable in her own skin. So when Zobel told her he was going to edit the belly area, she responded: “Don’t you dare!”
The Oscar-winner also admitted this could be her last nude scene – but not because of her age.
“I think my days are getting a little bit numbered of doing nudity,” she told The New York Times.
“I’m just not that comfortable doing it anymore. It’s not even really an age thing, actually. There comes a point where people are going to go, ‘Oh, here she goes again.'”
Kate previously admitted she was “by far the least self-conscious” she’s ever been filming a sex scene with Saoirse Ronan in “Ammonite,” a 2020 romantic drama loosely inspired by the life of British paleontologist Mary Anning.
The screen star revealed she and the 27-year-old ‘Little Women’ star were fully in charge of their lesbian romp and it’s the one of which she’s most “proudest.”
“Saoirse and I choreographed the scene ourselves,” she explained.
“It’s definitely not like eating a sandwich. I just think Saoirse and I, we just felt really safe. Francis [Lee, the director] was naturally very nervous. And I just said to him, ‘Listen, let us work it out.’ And we did.
“‘We’ll start here. We’ll do this with the kissing, boobs, you go down there, then you do this, then you climb up here,'” she said.
“I mean, we marked out the beats of the scene so that we were anchored in something that just supported the narrative. I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene on ‘Ammonite’.
And I felt by far the least self-conscious.”