Kate Winslet Once Shared Her Rough ‘Titanic’ Experience Later Helped Her With This Movie
Actor Kate Winslet was exposed to many uncomfortable conditions while filming James Cameron’s physically taxing Titanic. But Winslet’s experiences on the film’s set came in handy while shooting another movie years later.
How ‘Titanic’ helped Kate Winslet with ‘A Little Chaos’
Winslet collaborated alongside Alan Rickman for the second time in her career in the 2014 period piece A Little Chaos. The project saw Winslet playing a female gardener tending to the gardens of royalty in the 1600s. While filming, there was a scene in the feature where her character had to fix a flooding stream. This required Winslet, who was pregnant at the time, to immerse herself in water. But she asserted that the scene wasn’t as hard to shoot as some might’ve thought. Especially since Winslet took control of the scene entirely.
“I was absolutely fine in the water. It was warm and at night and it wasn’t cold so it was like getting into a big bath,” she once said according to Contact Music. “I was bossing everyone around and they were like, ‘Kate, we’ve really warmed the water for you’. I was like, ‘Well, what temperature have you warmed that water to because if it’s too warm, it’s like getting into a hot tub and we’re not supposed to get into hot tubs too long any of us, let alone pregnant women.’”
Winslet credited her time on the Titanic for being able to handle the experience the way she did. The Oscar-winner was exposed to floods quite frequently in the disaster romance.
“I said, ‘You’re gonna have to change the temperature. Plus, when you turn on those rain towers and the cold water hits warm water you’re gonna get steam which you don’t want, because this is supposed to be a river,’” she recalled. “Sure enough, they did a test and there was steam everywhere. I said, ‘Told you!’ Dare I say it but I did learn that on Titanic.”
Kate Winslet recalled her ‘Titanic’ injuries
Titanic was as harrowing as it was rewarding for Winslet. It may have financially secured her career at the time, but it alsi pushed the actor to her physical limits. A normal work day with Cameron and her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio meant spending 20 hours in grueling conditions.
“And two-thirds of it was night shooting–because the Titanic sunk at night,” Winslet once told the LA Times. “It was every man for himself on the set–you had to ensure that you snatched some sleep during the day, with a black eye mask on. Sometimes you’d find yourself having lunch at 2 a.m. or breakfast at 4 p.m. It was very disorienting.”
Winslet took home physical injuries that served as reminders of her time on the Titanic.
“I chipped a small bone in my elbow,” Winslet reflected. “And at one point I had deep bruises all over my arms. I looked like a battered wife.”
Perhaps one of the most dangerous positions Winslet was put in was when the actor nearly drowned. A coat she was wearing at the time snagged on a gate during a scene where she was running from wild waters on the ship. The coat had gotten caught on an opening gate, dragging Winslet down underneath the water.
“I had to sort of shimmy out of the coat to get free,” she remembered. “I had no breath left. I thought I’d burst. And Jim just said, ‘OK, let’s go again.’ That was his attitude. I didn’t want to be a wimp so I didn’t complain.”
