The performance Kate Winslet admits is “awful”
When it comes to the most underrated actors in contemporary Hollywood, Kate Winslet is certainly part of the conversation. Collaborating with the likes of James Cameron, Michel Gondry, Ang Lee, Sam Mendes, Roman Polanski, Steven Soderbergh and Danny Boyle ever since she joined the industry in the early 1990s, Winslet has grown to become one of the most dynamic actors in modern cinema.
Nominated for seven Academy Awards, Winslet finally took home an Oscar back in 2009, winning for her performance in Stephen Daldry’s romantic drama The Reader. Set in post-war Germany, the story follows a man whose love affair with an old woman comes to an end, only to be rekindled decades later whilst she is defending herself in a war-crime trial, with Winslet appearing alongside Ralph Fiennes and Bruno Ganz.
Although she is better known for her silver screen roles, Winslet shone in the HBO crime drama Mare of Easttown in 2021, playing the role of a local police officer who is forced to solve a grisly murder case years after the death of her own daughter. Often overshadowed by other more commercially successful HBO programmes like The Sopranos and Succession, Mare of Easttown is a tremendous triumph.
Despite her many quality performances, there is one, however, that Winslet doesn’t recall so fondly. Making a name for Winslet in 1997, Titanic became the highest-grossing movie of all time upon its release, catapulting her and co-star Leonardo DiCaprio to worldwide fame. Playing a young American woman travelling on the ill-fated titular vessel, Winslet was only 22 when the film was released, and, in hindsight, she doesn’t make much of her American accent.
“I can’t listen to it. It’s awful. Hopefully, it’s so much better now,” Winslet told The Telegraph in 2012 upon the re-release of the movie in 3D. Continuing in her tirade against her own accent in the film, she adds: “It sounds terribly self-indulgent, but actors do tend to be very self-critical. I have a hard time watching any of my performances but watching Titanic, I was just like, ‘Oh God, I want to do that again.'”
She doesn’t think much of her entire performance, in fact, stating: “Every single scene, I’m like ‘Really, really? You did it like that? Oh my God… I haven’t seen the whole film in a very long time, I’ve seen little pieces of it, but it’s a whole different me, and we look much younger, and our acting was different, hopefully not as good as now.”
James Cameron went on to break the box office records of Titanic on two occasions, claiming Hollywood supremacy with the release of Avatar in 2009 and its long-awaited sequel, The Way of Water, in 2022. Thanks to these two fantasy flicks and 1997’s Titanic, Cameron holds three films in the list of the top five highest-grossing movies of all time, with Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens joining him at the top.
Take a look at the trailer for Titanic below.
