At 47, Kate Winslet Opens Up About Going Topless in New Movie ‘Lee’: ‘Not Hiding’
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Kate Winslet opened up about filming a topless scene for her latest movie, Lee.
She portrays World War II-era photojournalist Lee Miller, a model by trade who stepped behind the camera to document history, but also posed in some of her own photos.
“I had to be really f*cking brave about letting my body be its softest version,” she said.
Kate Winslet’s latest return to the big screen is a pretty poignant one. She stars in (and produced) Lee, a World War II-era biopic that follows the tumultuous work life of model-turned-frontline photojournalist Lee Miller. Winslet embodied Miller in the film and went as far as to recreate some of her iconic shots—including going topless.
At 47, Winslet has done her fair share of nude scenes, but this one was particularly challenging. The shoot day fell during a time in which Winslet was recovering from a back injury, so she wasn’t able to work out prior to baring it all. “You know I had to be really f*cking brave about letting my body be its softest version of itself and not hiding from that,” she recalled to British Vogue.
After all, Winslet’s first priority was accurate storytelling. “I know better than to waste precious energy on criticizing my physical self,” she continued. “I think any woman is better off just saying: ‘I believe in myself. It doesn’t matter what other people think. This is who I am—let’s get on with it.’”
And that’s exactly what she did. In another scene, Winslet recreated a Miller shot in which she wore a swimsuit top. The Titanic star approached it with the same laissez-faire mentality. “And believe me, people amongst our own team would say, ‘You might just want to sit up a bit,’” she recalled. “And I’d go, ‘Why? [Because of] the bit of flesh you can see? No, that’s the way it’s going to be!’”
The attitude is reminiscent of how Winslet approached her portrayal of small-town detective and single mom Mare Sheehan in the 2021 Max series Mare of Easttown. When director Craig Zobel tried to edit her stomach from a sex scene, she put her foot down.
“Don’t you dare!” she said, per The New York Times. “[Mare’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.” Viewers appreciated Sheehan’s authenticity. “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 added.
Winslet’s passion for genuine depictions of women comes from a long history of being body-shamed as a young actress. “I would go so far as to [call it] bullying,” she told British Vogue. “I was consistently told I was the wrong shape. I was consistently told I would have to settle for less.”
Thankfully, she didn’t believe them. And it’s very clear that they were wrong.
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