Kate Winslet Recalls Being Told She 'Was Too Fat' in Infamous Titanic Debate: 'They Were So Mean'

Francis Specker/CBS

Kate Winslet is calling out the tabloid treatment she received early in her career.

The Academy Award winner, 47, got candid about her experience in the 1997 James Cameron blockbuster Titanic, including the "awful" body-shaming she faced from the media and the public, as she appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast ahead of the film's 25th anniversary.

"Apparently, I was too fat," Winslet told host Josh Horowitz of some of the more insulting arguments about why Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) couldn't fit on that door prior to his death. "Isn't it awful? Why were they so mean to me? They were so mean. I wasn't even f—ing fat."

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"If I could turn back the clock, I would have used my voice in a completely different way. … 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."

She's previously opened up about the "straight-up cruel" treatment she got from tabloids, telling The Guardian last February: "I was still figuring out who the hell I bloody well was!"

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"They would comment on my size, they'd estimate what I weighed, they'd print the supposed diet I was on," Winslet recalled. "It was critical and horrible and so upsetting to read."

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Winslet recounted feeling "bullied" by British media the month before on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, explaining it "was like night and day from one day to the next" after Titanic came out.

"I remember just thinking, 'Okay, well, this is horrible, and I hope it passes,'" she continued. "And it did definitely pass, but it also made me realize that if that's what being famous was, I was not ready to be famous, thank you. No, definitely not."

Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox

During her appearance on Happy Sad Confused, Winslet also addressed the long-held question of whether Jack could have fit on the door with Rose at the end of Titanic, and ultimately saved himself from a frozen grave.

"You just have to make a joke of it, don't you? I don't f—ing know. The answer is, I don't f—ing know," she said, before ultimately determining the answer.

"I have to be honest, I actually don't believe that we would have survived if we had both gotten on that door. I think that he could have fit, but it would have tipped ... and it would not have been a sustainable idea."

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"So, you heard it here for the first time. Yes, he could have fit on that door, but it would not have stayed afloat. It wouldn't," Winslet added.

PEOPLE's new special edition, Titanic: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and the Making of an Epic Love Story, is available now wherever magazines are sold.