Kate Winslet found immense fame after her starring role as Rose in James Cameron’s defining film, Titanic. The film went on to become one of the biggest of all time, and its stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, both still young, shot to stardom. For Winslet, this marked the beginning of a tumultuous period where she had to adjust to a very different world.
Kate Winslet talks about scary events that followed after Titanic’s success
The success of Titanic meant that Kate Winslet was in the public eye like never before. While this could mean some good things, it also meant that Winslet became the subject of a lot of unwanted attention.
Winslet, who starred as Rose DeWitt Bukater in the 1997 film, told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in a recent interview about the scary events that followed her Titanic success. “It was horrific,” the actress opened up. “There were people tapping my phone. They were just everywhere. And I was just on my own. I was terrified to go to sleep.”
She also expressed how people went to scary lengths to know things about her. In more severe instances, people were rummaging through her trash can so they could “try and figure out what diet I was on or wasn’t on.”
She also recalled seeing her face often on covers of magazines and newspapers, which were accompanied by “awful, terrible, actually abusive names.”
As a 22-year-old, this was a lot to take in for Kate Winslet. “I wasn’t ready for that world,” she admitted and said that her way to cope with this involved “a good meal, a shared conversation, a nice cup of coffee, a bit of Radiohead and a good poo.” She added, “Life’s all the better for those things.”
Titanic became the biggest film that year, and it remained the highest-grossing film for the years to come. It was also the first movie to gross over $1 billion in history.
