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Kate Winslet explored intimacy with an open mind as a teenager.
On the Dec. 24 episode of the Team Deakins podcast, the 50-year-old actress revealed that her “first intimate experience” as a teenager was “with a girl.”
Reflecting on her role in Heavenly Creatures, about two teenagers who develop a passionate friendship with Melanie Lynskey, Winslet said the connections she had with the women she had as a teenager helped create a “really strong connection” between her character and Lynskey’s character.
“I’m going to share something I’ve never shared before. Some of my first intimate experiences as a teenager were actually with girls,” she explained. “I kissed a few girls and a few boys, but I didn’t really evolve in either direction.”
“At that stage in my life, I was definitely curious, and I think there was something about this really strong connection that these two women had that made me understand deeply,” Winslet added. “I was immediately sucked into the vortex of their world and it obviously took a toll on both of them and left them with a lot of anxiety and vulnerability.”
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Heavenly Creatures, released in 1994 and directed by Peter Jackson, was Winslet’s breakthrough film.
She went on to appear in blockbusters such as Sense and Sensibility and Hamlet, before gaining international fame thanks to 1997’s Titanic, in which she co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio.
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Winslet recently made her directorial debut with the Christmas family drama Goodbye June, currently streaming on Netflix.
She has also appeared in films, opposite an ensemble cast that includes Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, and Helen Mirren.
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Winslet is married to Edward Abel Smith. The couple have a 12-year-old son, Bear Blaze, and the award-winning actress is also mom to 25-year-old daughter Mia Threapleton with ex-husband Jim Threapleton and 22-year-old son Joe Mendes with ex-husband Sam Mendes.
The Avatar: Fire and Ashes star has been notoriously secretive about her Hollywood romance over the years.
she told WSJ. Magazine in September 2015, “No one really knows what happened in my life. No one really knows why my first marriage didn’t last. No one really knows why my second marriage didn’t last. And I’m proud of those silences.”
Winslet spoke to The Sunday Times in 2021 about relationships in the entertainment industry, particularly among LGBTQ+ people, and how she feared for her career if she came out publicly.
“There are young actors that I know, both well-known and budding, who are afraid that their sexuality will be exposed and that it will prevent them from getting cast in straight roles,” she said, adding that the situation is “terrible.”
