‘I was proud to show my 40-something post-children body’: Kate Winslet

She’s generating Oscar buzz with her performance in the lesbian romantic drama Ammonite in which she stars with Saoirse Ronan.

Los Angeles: Kate Winslet told to a website that not only is she proud she got to show off her naked 40-something, post-children body in the movie; she’s also ‘the proudest’ she’s ever felt about a very intimate sex scene that’s included in a film.

‘It’s definitely not like eating a sandwich,’ she said of the most explicit scene. ‘Saoirse and I choreographed the scene ourselves.’  The British actress is featured in a cover story for a magazine ahead of the public premiere of Ammonite at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. It had been due to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May but the COVID-19 pandemic put paid to that. The movie, set in England in the 1840s, tells the story of Mary Anning, a real-life fossil hunter, and the married woman she has a relationship with. Speaking of the sex scenes, Winslet explained that the director Francis Lee had been ‘naturally very nervous’.

So the Oscar-winning star took control. ‘I just said to him, ‘Listen, let us work it out.’ And we did,’ Winslet said of the set piece with Ronan.

”We’ll start here. We’ll do this with the kissing, boobs, you go down there, then you do this, then you climb up here.’ I mean, we marked out the beats of the scene so that we were anchored in something that just supported the narrative,’ she said.

‘I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene on Ammonite. And I felt by far the least self-conscious,’ Winslet added.  As for the suggestion that she could have used a body double, The Hollywood Reporter recounts that the Titanic star laughed at the suggestion.

‘I’m nearly 45, and Saoirse is almost half my age. And to have an opportunity to be my real 40-something self, post-children, you know? Women aren’t really having the courage to do that,’ Winslet told the outlet.

The actress has three children – Mia, 19, with first husband Jim Threapleton, Joe, 16, with second husband Sam Mendes, and Bear, six, with current husband Edward Abel Smith.

She explained about doing the nude scenes for Ammonite: ‘I was just excited to say, ‘This is what it is, peeps. This is how I am now,’ and it’s very much not the body I had 20 years ago.’  Winslet said she took extra steps to keep her portrayal authentic.

‘I made sure that I didn’t lose weight — which I do a lot, actually, on films,’ she revealed.

‘I hate to talk about weight, but I only say it in the context of, it was a conscious effort on my part to really make sure that I didn’t shrink or change myself for the sake of being naked. I did the opposite.’