The actor who tried to sabotage Kate Winslet’s big break: “He was trying to fuck me up”
In a business as tough as Hollywood, you need all the allies and friends you can get, with the industry being known for its back-stabbing tendencies, as people do whatever it takes to climb to the top.
It’s the kind of place where the phrase ‘keep your friends close but your enemies closer’ applies in a very literal way, as folks who say something nice to your face proceed to throw you under the bus in the audition room, badmouthing you at any chance to advance their own career.
For Kate Winslet, this is something she unfortunately experienced in spades, with early brushes with the dark side of the industry while about to take on her most infamous role. It shook her confidence and taught her an important lesson about the type of actor she wanted to be.
After the global success of Titanic, Winslet was met with the wrath of Hollywood and the ugly side of fame, which found her speaking about how she was treated by the press and her brutal time in the spotlight. But while she was somewhat sheltered before the film’s release and not quite at the staggering heights of fame that later came, she was still well-acquainted with the shadows of the monolith, describing how her audition for Titanic was tainted by the words of another actor.
Some athletes like to use smack talk to throw their opponents off their game, but it’s not typically something that one would employ in show business, with people usually being more sly when talking badly about their co-stars and colleagues.
But for Winslet, she experienced in the flesh during her audition for James Cameron’s blockbuster, saying, “He, whoever it was, very much wanted to let me know that he had been there doing this auditioning thing the whole of the day before. And absolutely threw out a couple of names of people who he had been auditioning with in camera. That he was completely trying to fuck me up. And I was like, ‘mmhmm, yeah, mmhm’.”
The actor was clearly trying to unnerve and intimidate her, with Winslet saying it taught her an important lesson on the type of person she wanted to be, saying, “I just took from that, ‘Wow, I’ll never do that to another actor. I will never, ever do that to another actor’. What is the point? But I also thought, ‘You’re not gonna get this part’. I could just tell. He was just way too pleased with himself. And Jim Cameron, I could sense, was not a person who was going to be very tolerant to any young actor who had any degree of arrogance.”
Some people say that confidence is key, but in this case, over-confidence is a killer, with this unknown actor clearly not getting the part and proving that quiet confidence and kindness are far more important qualities than delusional self-worth and mind games. While some might feel as though they have to use these tactics to get ahead, warmth and kindness have always defined Winslet and is no doubt one of the reasons why she is so successful today.
