“It rather haunts me”: the iconic movie moment that makes Kate Winslet “feel like throwing up”
It only takes one role for an actor to forever be associated with a certain catchphrase or reference, unable to do anything without a particular performance being brought up like an embarrassing memory you’d rather forget.
You’d think that an actor would be proud to talk about an iconic performance they’ve given, but sometimes it’s just too exhausting it seems, a never ending cycle of the same references and the same jokes. Perhaps it boils down to the fact that actors don’t want to be known for just one thing when they’ve dedicated so much of their time to other projects. To be defined by one movie must get irritating, and Kate Winslet will be the first to tell you that.
The British actor hit the big time pretty fast when she landed the role of Rose in James Cameron’s epic disaster romance Titanic, having only starred in a handful of movies beforehand. It didn’t matter that Winslet was a relative newcomer to the industry, and that she wasn’t American like her character, the actor evidently had what Cameron was looking for.
Starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Winslet found herself thrust into the world of stardom in a way she certainly couldn’t have expected. Sure, she knew it was going to be a big film, but Titanic turned out to be a worldwide phenomenon, temporarily becoming the highest-grossing movie ever made. There seemed to be something in the film for everyone, from dramatic life-or-death action to sweeping romance, so it was only a matter of time before Winslet became one of Hollywood’s most recognisable faces.
Yet, in the years since the release of the film, Winslet has found herself subjected to constant references that have worn her patience thin. And don’t get her started on hearing ‘My Heart Will Go On’. “I wish I could say, ‘Oh listen everybody! It’s the Celine Dion song!’ But I don’t. I just have to sit there, you know, kinda straight-faced, with a massive internal eye roll,” the actor revealed to The Los Angeles Times.
Winslet has simply heard the iconic ballad one too many times. “Every time I go into either some kind of a bar in a hotel where there’s a live pianist or into a restaurant where they are changing their music according to who walks in the door … it’s thrilling for people to ‘surprise’ me with the Celine Dion song.”
The actor even went as far as to say that the song makes her feel “like throwing up” whenever she hears it. “It rather haunts me.”
Celine Dion’s song, which was composed by Cameron’s long-time collaborator James Horner, is one of the most recognisable pieces of film music in cinema history, and love it or hate it, you can’t deny the success of the track, which instantly brings to mind images of the grand ship and Jack and Rose standing on the edge in their iconic pose.
The song was such a huge hit that it’s only understandable that Winslet is tired of it; after all, she has done so much more than Titanic, and she’s ready for people to stop associating her with the tragic love story she appeared in when she was 20.
