The dark side of fame can be exceptionally brutal to female stars. British actress Kate Winslet is the living proof of this as she spoke about feeling bullied in the aftermath of the success of ‘Titanic’.
Speaking on Marc Maron’s podcast, Winslet spoke about the global success of her 1997 release bringing a lot of scrutiny into her personal life.
The actress was only 21 years old when she starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the James Cameron doomed romance.
“I went into self-protective mode right away (after ‘Titanic’ came out),” Winslet said. “It was like night and day from one day to the next. I was subject to a lot of personal physical scrutiny, I was criticised a lot and the British press were quite unkind to me.”
The actress continued: “I felt bullied if I’m honest. I remember thinking, ‘this is horrible and I hope it passes’ -- it did definitely pass but it made me realise that, if that’s what being famous was, I was not ready to be famous, definitely not.”
Instead of cashing in on her newfound fame, Winslet retreated into doing smaller roles to move away from the spotlight.
“I still felt like I wasn’t really ready to do lots of big Hollywood jobs. It was a huge responsibility. I didn’t want to make mistakes, I didn’t want to blow it -- I wanted to be in it for the long game. So I did strategically try and find smaller things, just so I could understand the craft a bit better and understand myself a bit better, and maintain some degree of privacy and dignity,” Winslet said.
This isn’t the first time an actress has spoken out against the dark side of fame. Daisy Ridley experienced it first hand when she starred in the ‘Star Wars’ franchise, as did her co-star Kelly Marie Tran, who deleted her Instagram account in 2018 after being subjected to scrutiny and racial abuse.
Tran was the first Vietnamese-American woman of colour to play a lead role in the iconic series.
