Why This One Scene From ‘Titanic’ Still Haunted Kate Winslet
Titanic was one of the most important movies in Kate Winslet’s career. It took the actor from relatively unknown to a bonafide superstar overnight. But there were some things the Emmy-winner wishes she didn’t do in the blockbuster when she looks back on it. And one of those things, in particular, once continued to haunt her even years later.
Kate Winslet refused to watch her nude scene in ‘Titanic’
Kate Winslet has been very open about how uncomfortable she began to feel doing nude scenes in films. Although she’s done it in several movies for a variety of reasons, it was never a pleasant or easy experience.
“I hate it! Listen, make no mistake, I just get on it,” Winslet once told V Magazine (via Huffpost). “I just go in and say ‘Oh f*** let’s do it.’ And boom. If you complain about it or procrastinate it’s not going to go away. It’s a profoundly bizarre thing to do.”
Winslet may have bared all in her blockbuster movie Titanic, but she revealed she couldn’t even watch those scenes anymore.
“I’m not going to look,” Winslet once said at a Titanic London premiere according to The Sun. “I’ll be in the bar by that point.”
She also expressed a bit of regret stripping down in James Cameron’s mega-hit.
“I wish I hadn’t shown so much flesh but I was young and I had things to prove,” she continued.
As much as Winslet may regret the scene, there’s one aspect of it that continued following her. And she couldn’t stand it.
How the nude scene continued haunting Kate Winslet
For celebrities, signing autographs for fans comes with the territory of superstardom. But for Winslet, there’s a limit to what fans may ask of her to sign. In an interview with Yahoo, Winslet explained how she’s occasionally presented with a sketch of her Titanic nude scene by fans to autograph. But it’s one item Winslet refuses to put her signature on under any circumstances.
“It’s so uncomfortable. Why would you do that?” Winslet shared. “People ask me to sign that [picture] a lot.”
Apart from sketches of the scene, however, some fans have unearthed actual photos of the image as well. Which might be even worse for the star.
“There’s a photo of it as well that someone has lifted from a still of the film, and that photo gets passed around too,” Winslet confided. I’m like ‘No! I didn’t mean for it to be a photograph that I would end up seeing still 17 years later.’”
Because of this, Winslet felt “It’s still haunting me. It’s quite funny really.”
How Kate Winslet’s body might have helped empower women
Although Kate Winslet felt much discomfort doing nude scenes, she didn’t do them without purpose. Winslet once spoke to The Sun about how showing what a real woman’s body looked like on-screen could comfort real women.
“I look like the people that walk down the street,” Winslet said as reported by Yahoo. “I don’t have perfect boobs, I don’t have zero cellulite — of course I don’t — and I’m curvy. If that is something that makes women feel empowered in any way, that’s great.”
Winslet also believed that she might have done so many nude scenes because other actors weren’t willing to. Her showing her body might further show the audience that she was a regular human being. A concept people might lose perspective of given her celebrity status.
“On a deeper, subconscious level, it’s one of the reasons why I’ve allowed my stupid self to be so naked on screen,” she confided. “It’s partly because I do believe that it’s right for the character and it’s right for the story but it’s also knowing that not many people do that, actually — and not just that, but I’m a normal person.”
