The actor has rejected offers by the people behind the scenes in the TV series Mare of Easttown to adjust how she is seen in order to make her look more conventionally attractive.
Kate Winslet has said she refused a director’s offer to edit a sex scene in which she showed a “bulgy bit of belly” for her latest television series.
The actor claimed Craig Zobel, the director of her new HBO series Mare of Easttown, had offered to show her body in a more flattering light.
Winslet, who plays detective and a grandmother Mare Sheehan in a Pennsylvania town in the programme, the finale of which was broadcast in the UK on Monday, said she had refused and told Zobel: “Don’t you dare.”
She also said she twice sent back the promotional poster for the drama because she felt it had been altered too much.“I’m like: ‘Guys, I know how many lines I have by the side of my eye, please put them all back,’” Winslet, 45, told the New York Times.
“I said to my husband [Edward Abel Smith]: ‘Am I OK with that? Is it all right that I’m playing a middle-aged woman who is a grandmother who does really make a habit of having one-night stands?’ He’s like: ‘Kate, it’s great.’”
The actor added: “Listen, I hope that in playing Mare as a middle-aged woman – I will be 46 in October – I guess that’s why people have connected with this character in the way that they have done because there are clearly no filters.
“She’s a fully functioning, flawed woman with a body and a face that moves in a way that is synonymous with her age and her life and where she comes from. I think we’re starved of that a bit.”
Winslet is not hiding her age or the way she really looks and I hope that it helps older women actors gain parity with men.
Female actors who in their younger days were romantic leads find, as they reach middle age and beyond, that it is much harder to get good roles, even as they age gracefully. Male actors can age into character actor leading roles but older women tend to get sidelined into minor parts. Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton, and Glenn Close are among the few exceptions.
One thing that will help is that older male actors could land major roles because older men occupied most of the positions in the workplace and in the public sphere. As it becomes more common for older women to occupy those niches, they will, hopefully, be able to land as many good roles.
Every wrinkle, scar, bulge, and blemish is proof that the world hasn’t managed to kill us yet. I think we should be proud of them! Flaunt your receding hairline, show off those stretch marks. That’s our awesomeness on display.
Hm.
Not in the case of her “bulgy bit of belly” in that particular scene, that much is true.
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So is every wart, amputation, pustule, colostomy bag or suchlike.
The more decrepit, the prouder!
Got it.
@John Morales #2
Yes, but unironically. Flaunt it with pride, because none of these things make people lesser human beings.
The very fact that people like you still say things like this just shows how necessary that is.
Amy Schumer’s style was a bit hit or miss for me, but I thought this sketch was pretty sharp.
Dauphni:
Um, taking pride in them is hardly necessary to not being a lesser human being, and particularly, that none of those things make people lesser human beings is not a reason to be proud of them.
In your opinion, perhaps. In mine, it’s not necessary to be proud of ageing-related ailments and symptoms thereof.
(But, hey, if you’re that needy, go for it)
John Morales:
You don’t have to celebrate this stuff yourself, but don’t belittle the celebration of those of us who are proud of all that we’ve survived.
I’m definitely in agreement that we shouldn’t be shamed about superficial crap like how our bodies look. However, it’s just not the case that a “bulgy bit of belly” (or a wrinkle, etc.) is some kind of medical condition that a person ever fails to survive, so it’s a little strange to confuse it with stuff like that.
Mark, thanks.
Much nicer to be told that I don’t have to do that, rather than being told that’s what I should do, or that it’s a necessary thing. A proxy for not being embarrassed by the consequences of ageing.
Me, I accept those things, but I don’t celebrate them nor see them something about which to be proud. Not proud of it, but not ashamed of it, either. Just a consequence of my mental ageing.