Kate Winslet Says Fame Brought Relentless Bullying After ‘Titanic’

Titanic made Kate Winslet a household name, but the blockbuster’s leading lady now admits it came at a painful cost.

Winslet, 50, spoke to The Sunday Times ahead of the release of her directorial debut, Goodbye June. In the interview, the actress opened up about the sudden scrutiny that came with Titanic‘s unprecedented success—and the invasive levels of media attention that followed.

“The media was vile, singling me out for relentless bullying,” she said in the interview. “I wasn’t ready to be a famous actress.”

Ready or not, though, Titanic‘s monumental box-office performance turned Winslet—who was just 22 at the time of its release—into one of the most famous actresses in the world virtually overnight.

In 1997, Titanic became the highest-grossing film in history—a rank it held for more than a decade, until the release of James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar.

“I was so young, but I felt so invaded,” Winslet said. “People climbed into my garden. I couldn’t go to a shop. I was followed when I had a baby in the back of the car on my way to the pediatrician.”

The sudden, intense public attention also caught her family off guard. For her siblings, she said, this newfound fame was likely a flurry of confusion, fascination and pride.

“To my dad, I was still that little girl he helped clean out the rabbit hutch every Saturday afternoon,” she said.

Having had to grow up fast in that harsh spotlight, Winslet expressed gratitude for the privilege of getting older more broadly—even in Hollywood—and how much she loves her aging hands. “My favorite thing is when your hands get old,” she told Times. “That’s life, in your hands.”

She also lamented that some of the “most beautiful women I know are over 70, and what upsets me is that young women have no concept of what being beautiful actually is.”

Goodbye June centers on family matriarch June (played by Helen Mirren) and her loved ones as they struggle to navigate June’s advancing cancer during the Christmas season.

Winslet’s own mother, Sally, died of ovarian cancer in 2017; the movie was written by Winslet’s son, Joe Mendes (who goes by Joe Anders professionally), and was partly inspired by Sally’s experiences with the illness.

Anders, 22, is Winslet’s son from her marriage to director Sam Mendes, whom she divorced in 2011.