Starring in Titanic skyrocketed Kate Winslet to fame and subsequently kicked off one of the most tumultuous times of her life. During an appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, the actress recalled being followed by paparazzi and having her phone tapped.
"I didn't want to be famous," Winslet admitted. "I really didn't. I know it sounds so daft, but it's not necessarily an easy path to walk and to stay sane and to hang on to your sense of self and who you are. And my whole world was totally turned upside down through being in Titanic. I have, of course, so much to be grateful for and the experience of making the film was incredible. But I wasn't ready for that world."
She explained she wasn't in a great place mentally around her body, although director James Cameron encouraged her to "be really strong" and get a higher level of physical stamina for the shoot. "They got me a personal trainer and I've never had a personal trainer since," she said. "But I actually loved the discipline of it."
Winslet, who turned 21 while making the film, assumed she would be able to just return to her "normal life" after making Titanic. However, the British press soon had her in their crosshairs.
"[They] started calling me awful, terrible, actually abusive names," she said. "Going into shops and asking shopkeepers what I'd bought. Going through my [trash] bins to look for my shopping receipts to figure out what diet I was on or wasn't on. It was an utter disgrace and shame on every single one of them. And thank God they don't do that now."
She continued, "That was horrible. I just felt like I couldn't walk down the street without seeing myself on the cover of The Sun or The Daily Mail or The News of the World. It was horrific. There were people tapping my phone. They were just everywhere. And I was just on my own. I was terrified to go to sleep... It really was quite scary."
Titanic, which starred Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, was released in theaters on Dec. 19, 1997. It quickly went to No. 1 at the box office and became the highest-grossing film of all time until Cameron's Avatar surpassed it in 2010.
Winslet explained that she dealt with the pressure thanks to a group of good friends and some particularly nice neighbors, who helped protect her from the paparazzi. "I had someone looking after me and it meant the world to know that someone was there," she said.
Elsewhere in the interview, Winslet reflected on the paparazzi attention she received after her divorce from filmmaker Sam Mendes in 2010. "I was being followed by paparazzi in New York City with my two small kids, who wanted to, of course, know the reason why Sam and I had split up," she remembered, adding, "You just keep your mouth closed, you put your head down, and you keep walking. And you try and put your hands over your children's ears. You lean on your friends, you just keep going."
Winslet's directorial debut, Goodbye June, is in theaters now and on Netflix on Dec. 24. The Christmas-themed film was written by her son Joe Anders, and stars Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, Helen Mirren, and Winslet herself.
