From auditioning with Matthew McConaughey for "Titanic" to nearly throwing up when receiving an Oscar, Kate Winslet shares the experiences in her life that made her who she is today ...
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00:00Don't compare yourself to others. Use your own voice, because it is your own voice that will
00:05always be the one thing that you can go back to. Don't be judgmental, just stick to your truth
00:12and go for it.
00:19I was born in 1975 and I'm a Libra. I was born in October and I was born in a town called
00:27Reading. My mother hated exams. She hated that we would revise for exams. She hated homework.
00:37She hated anything that kept us indoors. She wanted us to be outside, climbing trees,
00:44digging for worms, having adventures, cooking, enjoying life, swimming in the rivers, swimming
00:49in the sea. She would say, oh I think it's wrong, I think it's so wrong, all these exams,
00:54it's so stressful. And I tell my children now that this is what their grandmother would say.
01:01I just felt I had freedom to follow my dreams and follow my chosen path and to enjoy my life
01:09and not to be stressed. I was always the first in the sea, in the freezing cold English sea,
01:15in the winter. I was always the first in the sea. I loved food. I was always writing stories.
01:24Always making up characters. I was always singing. I was happy in my own skin. I really remember that.
01:33And yeah, a bit of a tomboy, I think. And I was one of four children and so there was just
01:39not the money to take all four of us children to go and see a movie. So when I was a teenager,
01:46the only actress I can honestly say that I was inspired by was Jodie Foster.
01:58Luckily for you, I remember everything very clearly. So an anecdote was that I read
02:07with Matthew McConaughey. He read for Jack, so we auditioned together. That was such a crazy
02:14experience. He was lovely. I remember him being really nice and really funny.
02:21And what else can I tell you? I was so nervous. I was really incredibly nervous.
02:29And also, I didn't think I was going to get the part. I thought, oh, there's no way. I'm English.
02:35There's no way. I remember thinking, oh, they'll cast like Winona Ryder or Uma Thurman.
02:40Why would they cast me? So yeah, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it when I got that part.
02:51I loved everything about that character, how she looked, how she moved, how she spoke.
02:56It was just so much fun. So yeah, I'd love to revisit that role. Can't you just imagine how
03:04crazy an older Clementine would be? I'm so intrigued to know what happened to her,
03:13what happened in her life. And did she stay that kind of crazy and angry and eccentric? Did she
03:22stay that way? Or I don't know, did she become more sort of neutral and plain? But I hope that
03:30she was still like coloring her hair a bit and wearing all those wonderful clothes. It would
03:36be so amazing to know what happened to her as she got older. I was nearly sick. I nearly threw up.
03:48I nearly threw up. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, I can't speak. My mouth went,
03:55my throat went completely dry. I was like... I mean, it's the stuff of dreams, you know,
04:03for a young actor. I mean, I had dreamed about going to the Academy Awards one day. It was a
04:13dream to stand on that stage and to hold that thing. That was a fantasy for me. And so when
04:21it really happened, I mean, I feel like I'm one of the few people in the world who gets to
04:29actually have a dream come true. And it was a dream come true.
04:38It was very important to me to make her extremely real as a woman in her 40s who
04:48has suffered terrible grief. I knew that that would be a woman who would just
04:52need to look absolutely exhausted and have such enormous sort of emotional range within her.
05:04So I am just so happy that people have connected with the character in the way that they have,
05:14because I really tried to create a woman who was so real that audiences should feel like they
05:21might know her or meet her or, you know, she's so similar to so many people that I know.
05:29So I wanted her to represent, I think, validation for so many of us. It was just very important to
05:36me that those two faces were the same, the face on the poster and the face in the show.
05:41It has to be the same person. And it's difficult for people, I think, to wrap their heads around,
05:46you know, the people who work on the digital side, the creative side and the marketing side of
05:53a television show or a film. You know, they're so used to making actors and actresses look their
05:59best. And I was like, no, no, no, we need to make me look my worst. Don't forget. And they're like,
06:07oh, and they were, you know, have so happy to do it. But it was really interesting how
06:12we kept having to, like, remind people, like, no, no, she's meant to look bad. It's OK.
06:21I felt a real sense of their heritage and where they came from.
06:25And so many of the stories were very personal, clearly very personal to them.
06:29And that I felt was powerful and brave and tremendously exciting because that's what we
06:37want. That's how women connect by sharing stories of other women. That's what we want to hear.
06:43That's how we will always be united. And that is that is, I think, the way of the future.
06:48I think it's shifting. I mean, I feel a younger generation of women, as you talk about that
06:54younger audience, they're just learning to use their voices in a much more spontaneous way
07:00without any degree of hesitation or fear or judgment. That's changing. And I think the
07:10more that we see of that, the more we have celebrations like this one with Lights on Women,
07:15the more we're walking in the right direction and hopefully towards a much more equal film industry.