Kate Winslet on Playing Lee Miller, Hollywood Standards and ‘Titanic’

Kate Winslet says she still gets nervous when she really wants a role and has moments of doubt — despite being an Oscar-winning actress.

“Oh, honestly, it’s a whole bunch of mind fucking,” she said, laughing, in an interview with 60 Minutes that aired Sunday. “I mean, it is, even to this day. Like anything, going for a job interview, it’s absolutely terrifying. If it’s a job you really want, doubly terrifying.”

Despite her Oscar win — for 2008’s The Reader — she sometimes feels like she isn’t worthy of a role.

“So what?” she said when it was noted she’s won the film industry’s top prize. “When I was doing Lee, I would sit there and I would say, ‘This is ridiculous. … I can truly think of at least five other brilliant actresses who would have played this part much better than me. Like a lot better.’ And often I will turn to another crewmember and I’ll say, ‘They just read the wrong name off the list. I’m telling you, they didn’t mean for me to be here.’ “

To play the role of the World War II photographer Lee Miller in her latest film, Winslet — who also was a producer — Winslet researched archives with the help of Miller’s son. She also hired a historian to make an exact replica of Miller’s camera and actually took pictures during her performance.  

“It couldn’t just be a prop,” she said. “It needed to feel like an extension of my arms. I had to be confident and comfortable with it. And in order to do that, I had to know what I was doing.”

Miller was a fashion model who turned to photography. During WWII, she served as a war correspondent for Vogue and took the photos of the first recorded use of napalm as well some of the first images of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau. She also was photographed sitting in Adolf Hitler’s bathtub in his private apartment in Munich the day he committed suicide in Berlin. Winslet said it wasn’t easy to get backers on board initially.

“There was one potential investor who said to me, ‘Why should I like this woman?’ I mean, she’s drunk, she’s, you know, she’s like loud. She, I mean, he just probably stopped short of saying she has wrinkles on her face,” she said. 

Winslet added: “It’s hard to make films about historical female figures. You know, typically, those aren’t films that would necessarily do well in the box office,” she said, noting “proudly” that her movie has taken in nearly $25 million globally so far.

The actress said she doesn’t mind defying Hollywood norms onscreen after being mocked for her weight early in her career and is bothered by the double standards for men.

“People say, ‘Oh, you were so brave for this role. You didn’t wear any makeup,’” she said. “You know, ‘You had wrinkles.’ Do we say to the men, ‘Oh, you were so brave for this role. You grew a beard?’ No. We don’t. …  it’s not brave. It’s playing the part.”

She added that a crewmember on Lee told her to “suck in, sit up” during one scene. But she refused to do so.

“I don’t think Lee would have done [that],” she said. “It’s about knowing that Lee’s  ease with her physical self was hard won.” Plus, she added, “it’s exhausting” constantly worrying about that.

Meanwhile, Winslet bristled a little when asked about her breakout role in 1997’s Titanic — specifically, whether Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) could have fit on the piece of wood with Rose, thereby possibly saving his life.

“You know what? I have no idea,” she replied.

Asked if she gets annoyed by questions about a 27-year-old movie, Winslet replied: “No. I tell you what I do sometimes find just curious, I suppose, is whatever I say about Titanic will often be the take-home so I just think, ‘Oh, well, there were those things that I said about the film I was talking about,’ and yet that’s the one thing. So that’s the only thing that sometimes I just think, hmm.”