Kate Winslet Didn’t Like Contemporary Movies Because They Always Made Actors Look Too Perfect
Kate Winslet has often played characters in period pieces like Titanic and The Reader. Although she’s dabbled in more contemporary work as well, she was once a bit put off by more modern features. If only for how they made actors look onscreen.
How Kate Winslet once felt about her reputation for period pieces
Winslet has been especially drawn to period pieces since the early days of her career. Her first film role, Heavenly Creatures, was a biographical feature that focused on a murder in the 1950s. Afterwards, Winslet found herself in works like Hamlet, Jude, and Titanic, which were all period flicks as well.
In a 1995 interview with the New York Times, Winslet recognized the amount of period pieces she did. Although she didn’t consider herself to be a period-piece actor exclusively, she didn’t feel the need to break the pattern.
“But I’m not that period babe, not at all,” Winslet said. “I haven’t really sat back and addressed the fact I have done all these period films. Some people say, ‘Don’t you want to do something modern?’ I suppose I do. But I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing at all. I do feel very comfortable in the clothing.”
Kate Winslet didn’t like contemporary movies because they made the actors look too perfect
Over time, Winslet saw herself branching out to do modern features of a variety of genres. Movies like The Holiday and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were a few of the contemporary films Winlset experimented with.
In 2006, she added the modern film Little Children to her film resume. In the feature, Winslet played a housewife who grows restless with the routine of her life. This leads to her seeking a thrill with a new acquaintance she met by chance.
Winslet enjoyed, not only playing the character, but tinkering around with her character’s presentation in the film. It was important for Winslet not to come off too glamorous for Little Children. It was a mistake she’d often see in other more modern pieces.
“More than anything else, I wanted her to look like someone you’d bump into in the street,” she once said in an interview with Black Film. “You see, I was never a big fan of contemporary movies because they always make actresses and actors look too perfect. Who would believe that they ever really look like that?”
Kate Winslet tried breaking away from the mold of period pieces with ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’
Winslet was determined to show audiences a new side to herself with the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Eternal Sunshine was a sci-fi feature where Winslet played the ex-girlfriend of someone who was trying to erase all memories of her. Since Winslet was so used to performing in period pieces, she realized she had to change her acting sensibilities for the role.
“I knew I had to break that mold completely, which meant that I just worked very, very hard on the dialect. I wanted her to look totally different from everything else I’ve ever done,” she once said in an interview with Live About. “I think we can safely say she does. I just knew that I had to completely change my whole persona and I was thrilled to be able to do that, and be given the opportunity to do that.”
In Eternal Sunshine, Winslet also found acting in a more contemporary setting a bit more liberating than doing period pieces.
“Sometimes I would say to Michel, ‘Let me know if I’m not going enough. Let me know if I’m going too far.’ And more often than not, he would be pushing me further,” Winslet added. “I was so terrified of being over the top and he would just say, ‘No, no, no. More, more, more.’ And I’d be like, ‘Really?’ He’d go, ‘Yeah, it doesn’t matter. Just do it, just try it.’ That was fantastically liberating. When you do classical period films, you don’t get the opportunity to do that. It’s a more subtle approach.”
