The 45-year-old actor spoke of the pressure she felt by the UK media following her big acting debut.
'Titanic' will always go down as one movie you just have to watch before you die. Everyone has seen it, and when James Cameron released it in 1997, it took the world by storm. It also shunted the two stars of the movie, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, front and centre. Both went on to become household names for many of us.
However, there is a sting to the tale. In a recent podcast appearance, on comedian Marc Maron's 'WTF', Winslet spoke of how cruel she thought the UK tabloids treated her.
At the age of 21, it was almost too much for the Reading native.
She told Maron: "I went into self-protective mode right away. It was like night and day from one day to the next. I was subject to a lot of personal physical scrutiny, I was criticized a lot and the British press were quite unkind to me.
"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 realize that, if that’s what being famous was, I was not ready to be famous, definitely not."
Compared to her on-screen counterpart DiCaprio, who had already begun to make a name for himself after appearing in Baz Luhrmann's 'Romeo + Juliet', Winslet was very new to the paparazzi scene.
She continued: "I was still learning how to act, I felt I wasn’t ready to do lots of big Hollywood jobs. I didn’t want to make mistakes and blow it, I wanted to be in it for the long game.
"I strategically tried to find small things so I could understand the craft a bit better and maintain some degree of privacy and dignity."
In the past, Kate Winslet spoke openly about bullies from when she was a teenager. She said that people would call her "Blubber", adding that she "might be lucky in my acting if I was happy to settle for the fat girl parts."
