Kate Winslet revealed that fans often recognize her more in public from her role in The Holiday rather than Titanic.
The actress stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday, where she talked about some of her biggest projects throughout her career with the host.
“People come up to me in the streets more about The Holiday and the episode of Extras that I did than Titanic,” she shared on the show.
“Especially at Christmas, and what’s so lovely is that mothers and daughters come up to me in the grocery store and they say, ‘OK, we just love The Holiday. It’s our little ritual at Christmas.’ And they have things that they eat every year. They sit down, it’s a tradition, and I just love that,” Winslet added. “That’s something I never would have expected, this sort of mother-daughter connection around a film like that. It’s so nice. It’s lovely.”
The actress starred alongside Jack Black, Jude Law and Cameron Diaz in the 2006 rom-com, which followed two women with guy problems who decide to swap homes in each other’s countries, and they each end up meeting a local guy and falling in love.
As for 1997’s Titanic, where Winslet starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, it followed a teen aristocrat who falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated RMS Titanic. Winslet’s role as Rose earned her an Oscar nomination for best leading actress.
Earlier during her conversation with Fallon, the host shared that he and Robert Downey Jr. also auditioned for The Holiday but lost out on roles.
“This is a really real story, which I remember extremely well. I really do,” Winslet recalled. So we were sort of told that you [Fallon] were coming in to do, well I thought it was just like a reading, we were just going to have a fun read of the script. I didn’t realize you were auditioning for the part. I’m so sorry you didn’t get it.”
She also remembered Fallon being “very sick, and you were obsessively hand sanitizing, and I thought, ‘OK, he’s one of those people.’” The host confirmed he was sick during the audition for the rom-com but thought at the time, “This is an opportunity of a lifetime to act with you guys.”
The Avatar: The Way of Water actress proceeded to recall Downey doing an English accent during his audition for The Holiday, “but I thought he was doing Australian and I thought, ‘That’s bad, that’s not gonna work. Who’s gonna tell him that? That sounds dreadful.’”
Fallon said he also heard the Iron Man star doing an Australian accent but he thought “it sounded great. This is perfect, but I don’t think the character is supposed to be Australian.”
Winslet quipped with a laugh, “It wasn’t actually that great, but that’s really sweet of you to say that.”
