Kate Winslet Wouldn't Let Mare of Easttown Director Edit Out a 'Bulgy Bit of Belly' in a Sex Scene

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Kate Winslet wanted to realistically portray every aspect of her character in HBO's Mare of Easttown, and even pushed back when she looked too retouched in an early promo posters and cuts of the new limited series.

"Listen, I hope that in playing Mare [Sheehan] 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 told the New York Times in an interview published on Monday. "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."

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Winslet also sent back a retouched promo poster, telling the outlet she knows "how many lines I have by the side of my eye" and asked the designers to put them back in.

The Oscar winner said she knows her "unglamorous" appearance in the series is jarring for viewers — and she didn't want it any other way. In fact, the Times reported that when director Craig Zobel said he would cut "a bulgy bit of belly" in her sex scene, Winslet objected, saying "Don't you dare!"

That's not to say you'll be seeing her in the buff in many more roles going forward: The actress says she's ready to put nude scenes behind her.

"I think my days are getting a little bit numbered of doing nudity," she said. "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.'"

RELATED: Kate Winslet Says Past Criticism of Her Weight Was 'Straight-Up Cruel': 'It Damaged My Confidence'

Last month, The French Dispatch actress shared that she had to "stay very fit" to prepare for the role during an interview with emmy magazine. 

Michele K. Short/HBO

Winslet explained that she had to stay on top of her health "not because we necessarily have to see a fit body" but because the star had to do "a lot of running" in the show.

"I had to physically do a lot of tackling and fighting and arresting people, you know, taking huge grown men down to the ground," she said.

While the Oscar winner said she wanted her character to look strong, she didn't want to make her body seem unattainable.

"It's nice to sense that Mare was once strong in her youth, but I didn't want to make her an impossible, superhuman forty-something-year-old," the actress told emmy. "Mostly women aren't like that. We do what we can in the midst of the juggle of everything else."