Kate Winslet has used today’s edition of Desert Island Discs to angrily mock a drama teacher who fat-shamed her as a child.
The Titanic star, 50, blew a raspberry on air at the unidentified female teacher who told her she would only play ‘the fat girl parts’.
In her most outspoken comments yet, Ms Winslet revealed just how tough the bullying she suffered at school was, as jealous classmates took aim at her over her weight.
But she suggested their meanness made her more determined to succeed as an actress.
Oscar-winning Ms Winslet told presenter Lauren Laverne: ‘Because I was a little bit stocky when I did start taking it much more seriously and got a child agent, I really remember vividly a drama teacher who many people have wrongly assumed was a man – it was actually a woman – and she said to me, ‘Well darling, you’ll have a career if you’re happy to settle for the fat girl parts.’
Now one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, the mother of three urged the teacher: ‘Look at me now!’ Before adding: ‘That wasn’t very nice, was it? It’s appalling the things people say to children.’
Ms Winslet, who won her Academy Award for The Reader and has secured six more Oscar nominations, also hit back at classmates who tormented her.
She recalled how she virtually stopped eating because of the relentless bullying she received at primary and secondary school.
Kate Winslet attending the “Lee” green carpet during the 20th Zurich Film Festival at Corso in October
Kate Winslet, pictured in Reading, Berkshire in November 1991 at 16-years-old
Ms Winslet, who has also won five Baftas, said she was ‘on and off diets from the age of 15 to 19 and eventually I was barely eating. It was really unhealthy.
‘It’s the only thing in my life I really regret because you know, long-term, not eating properly or eating and panicking about what you’d eaten or waking up in the morning and the first thing I’d think about is, ‘Oh my God, do I look fatter, do I look fatter?’ That went on for a really long time.’
The actress, who has just directed her first feature film, Goodbye June, from a screenplay written by her son Joe Anders, addressed the classmates who had bullied her at primary school.
She said: ‘I have to say, ‘Look you lot who were in my year at school, you were bloody horrible to me, and you should be ashamed.’
She added: ‘I had a lot of kids tease me at primary school. They would call me blubber. I wasn’t even overweight. I just had stocky thighs, and they would lock me in the art cupboard, and they would say, ‘Blubber’s blubbing in the art cupboard’ and things like that.’
Kate says the bullying continued through her teens and got even worse when she landed a starring role in the hit BBC drama Dark Season at the age of 15.
She said: ‘They hated me then. I remember going back to school and they had pushed my desk into a corner and moved their desks to the other side of the room.’
She added: ‘I learned to have a pretty thick skin fairly early on to be honest… But at the time it was happening I just threw myself into my theatre company and my creative world outside of school, so that the school mean people became as insignificant as I could possibly make them.
Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio in 1997 film Titanic, directed by James Cameron
Kate Winslet played Rose DeWitt Bukater in the 1997 film Titanic during her early 20s
‘I wouldn’t let them spoil a trajectory that I was determined I was on.’
Ms Winslet, who has criticised magazines for enhancing the way women look, and rejects having any cosmetic work done, is determined to grow old gracefully precisely because she is an actress.
She said: ‘I live my life with intention and integrity, having a face that moves. I have to. That is also how I do my job. I want to play characters who have wrinkles and crow’s feet and a face that is changing with age and a body that is moving with the passing decades. That’s life.’
l Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 10am and is available via BBC Sounds.
