Kate Winslet has revealed that some of her earliest intimate experiences as a teenager were with women.
While appearing on the Team Deakins podcast, the Oscar-winning actress, 50, reflected on her breakout performance in Heavenly Creatures, the 1994 drama-thriller directed by Peter Jackson.
The film starred Winslet opposite Melanie Lynskey as two teenage girls whose intense friendship spirals into a dangerously obsessive bond.
When asked how much of herself she brought to the role of Juliet, Winslet shared a deeply personal admission about how she connected to one of her most formative early roles.
‘I’ll share something I’ve never shared before. Some of my first intimate experiences as a young teen were actually with girls,’ she said. ‘I’d kissed a few girls, and I’d kissed a few boys, but I wasn’t particularly evolved in either direction.’
Winslet explained that those experiences helped her understand the powerful emotional pull at the center of the film.
‘At that stage in my life, I certainly was curious, and I think there was something about the really intense connection that those two women had that I profoundly understood,’ she said. ‘I was so immediately sucked into the vortex of that world they were in that obviously became horrendously damaging to both of them, and they had huge insecurities and vulnerabilities.’
The actress added that while she could not fully grasp the darker psychological elements of the story at such a young age, she strongly related to the way deep bonds can form during adolescence, when people are especially ‘vulnerable.’
‘Heavenly Creatures’ marked Winslet’s first major film role, and she told the podcast that she had ‘never held a film script’ before auditioning for the project.
The movie was also a pivotal moment for Jackson, representing his first dramatic feature after earlier work in horror films such as Bad Taste and Dead Alive.
Following the film’s success, Winslet quickly established herself as a rising star, appearing in Sense and Sensibility, Jude and Hamlet before achieving global fame with Titanic in 1997.
Over the years, Winslet, who is married to Edward Abel Smith, has advocated for LGBTQ+ actors in Hollywood by aiming to normalize same-sex relationships and fighting for queer representation.
In 2021, she opened up to The Sunday Times about how there are actors too ‘terrified’ of coming over how it would affect their careers.
‘I cannot tell you the number of young actors I know – some well known, some starting out – who are terrified their sexuality will be revealed and that it will stand in the way of their being cast in straight roles,’ she said.
‘I can think of at least four actors absolutely hiding their sexuality,’ Winslet stressed. ‘It’s painful. Because they fear being found out.’
The mother-of-three also spoke of a ‘well-known actor’ who was told not to ‘publicize’ the fact they were bisexual by their American agent.
Winslet said the film industry harbored ‘judgment, discrimination and homophobia’ and said the secrecy was ‘painful’ for the actors who fear their careers will be compromised if they come out.
In 2020, she starred in the film, Ammonite, in which she plays the role of real-life English paleontologist Mary Anning, who embarks on a secret relationship with Charlotte Murchison, played by Saoirse Ronan.
While promoting the movie, Winslet claimed she has been asked more about the lesbian love scenes in her new film Ammonite than any heterosexual roles she has taken on.
Winslet has never been romantically linked to a woman.
The star’s relationship history includes Stephen Tredre, Jim Threapleton, her first husband, Sam Mendes, her second husband, and Smith, who she wed in 2012.
