How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Kate Winslet - ‘I remember thinking: I do not want to be famous’

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Look, I don’t like to brag but in case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve got Kate Winslet on How To Fail this week. ACTUAL KATE WINSLET! The one and only!  And oh my goodness, what an incredible guest she is: acutely intelligent, funny and brilliantly forthright. We covered so much ground - from the media obsession with her body image, to her regret at giving up tap-dancing, her feelings of failure around not yet having directed, working with Emma Thompson and the time Woody Allen called her ‘a bad actress’...it’s *all* here. We talk about a career that started at the age of 17 in Heavenly Creatures and went on to encompass some of the biggest roles in the biggest movies of all time - Sense and Sensibility, Titanic, Iris, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and so much more. Along the way, Winslet has won  an Academy Award, two Emmys, five Baftas, five Golden Globes and been awarded a CBE. Now, 48, Winslet’s titular role in Lee, the biopic of war photographer Lee Miller, also marks her first time as producer. It was a passion project she was determined to get made, although it took her eight long years to do so. And for anyone who wants to hear more about the filming of The Holiday and whether she and Leonardo di Caprio are still friends, then you *have* to tune into Failing With Friends, our subscriber episode, where Winslet spills all the beans. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Manager: Lily Hambly Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Tickell and Josh Gibbs Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage your audience and sell anything from products to content to time, all in one place, all on your terms. I actually use and love Squarespace for my own website because it's so user-friendly. I also love a bit of merch. On Squarespace, you can actually design products and then the production, inventory and shipping are handled for you. You can also set up your own online store.

And Squarespace can even help you with flexible payments for your customers. And there's more! You can monetize your content by selling membership access to part of your website, and you can set up paywalls, so it's perfect for all of you entrepreneurs out there. Go to squarespace.com forward slash fail ten. That's F-A-I-L one zero for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use Fail10 to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

What's causing the rise in book banning? On my podcast, Velshi Ban Book Club, I speak with authors of banned books to try and find out. I think what they're really objecting to is that a young person has perceived the hypocrisy and corruption of the generation that has created their world. This book saved me in a lot of ways. And then I published it, hoping to help people find a blueprint to heal. Season two of Velshi Banned Book Club.

Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that believes that learning how to fail actually means learning how to succeed better. Would you like one of my celebrity guests providing you with personal advice? Well, you can get just that because every week my guest and I answer your questions and celebrate your failures in failing with friends. It'll be something like this one with actual Kate Winslet, can't believe I get to say that, who is my very special guest on How To Fail this week. It's possible that it might not go the distance anyway, because perhaps she will realise that she does need a bit of space from it and she will come back to you. So I would just trust

in that a little bit more. That is the best piece of advice I have ever heard anyone give. Do join in by following the link in the podcast notes or look out for my call-outs once a month on Instagram. And you can listen to How to Fail on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa, Play How to Fail with Elizabeth Day on Amazon Music. If T.S. Eliot could measure out his life in coffee spoons,

I can measure out mine in Kate Winslet roles. I mooned over her Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility as a teenager about to sit her GCSEs. I went on an ill-fated first date to see her in Titanic. My male university friends all had a crush on her in Iris. In my twenties, living in a house share, one of my favourite romantic comedies was The Holiday. A troubled first marriage was reflected in Revolutionary Road. And so it goes on through the reader and Eternal Sunshine and Steve Jobs right up until her riveting performance in the HBO detective drama, Mare of Easttown in 2021. Too many iconic roles to mention in the short space of this introduction.

Suffice it to say that, according to critics, Winslet is variously the best film actress of her generation, absolutely fearless, terrific, intelligent, focused, and seemingly devoid of ego. Marion Cotillard, her co-star in her latest film, Lee, a biopic of war photographer Lee Miller, put it this way, I look at her work and I never see her actually playing a role. I always see her being a person.

Winslet has received an Academy Award, two Emmys, five BAFTAs, five Golden Globes and a CBE. Her work has also earned her a world record for holding her breath for seven minutes for a film scene shot underwater in James Cameron's sci-fi sequels to Avatar. It is, by Winslet's own admission, a long way from where she started out. In her words, the fat kid at the back

with the wrong fucking shoes on. She was born in Reading, Berkshire, into a family of jobbing actors, and money was often tight. Winslet and her siblings were eligible for free school meals, and she left education at sixteen to work in a café, barely able to afford the train fare to London for auditions. But her talent was notable from a young age. At 11, her first paid gig was dancing opposite the Honey Monster in an advert for Sugar Puffs. Now 48, Winslet's titular role in Lee also marks her first time as producer. It was a

passion project she was determined to get made, and although it took eight years to do so, Winslet says, frankly, I've been through a lot. So there are corridors of emotions I can access that I simply didn't have when I was younger. Kate Winslet, welcome to How to Fail. Such an amazing introduction. Well done. Did I get anything wrong? This is what I'm always terrified of.

No, you didn't get anything wrong. I love that thing that the critic said about me. I'll take that. That's very nice. Because you don't read reviews, do you? No, I don't. No. There is one thing that you might have missed out, which is that, did you know I actually have a Grammy? Oh my goodness. Which is totally bonkers and I a thousand percent shouldn't have this Grammy at all.

And I'll just quickly tell you the story. So, yonks ago after Sense and Sensibility, Patrick Dorel, the composer, had written a beautiful piece of music with Wynton Marsalis and there were some spoken words that had been put to it. And Emma Thompson phoned me one morning, she's like, Hi darling, it's me. I've got a call in a favour, I'm so sorry, I've lost my voice. What's the matter? Lost my voice. Lost my voice. Anyway, Pat Doyle needs a replacement. I can't go and record this thing this afternoon. There's no money. It's just a favor for a mate. Do you mind?

Cut to the whole thing won best album for Spoken Word and I won a Grammy. That's epic. So Emma Thompson gave up a chance for a Grammy. I don't think she even knows that to be honest. I don't think she even knows that that's what happened. But yes, thank you. That was a very, very kind introduction. I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to write because I genuinely mean that I have seen so much of your work and we are more or less the same age. And it's always a pleasure to do an interview where you realise that your life has been part of the research. Like I went to see your movies because I love you as an actor. So it came very, very easily. But tell me a bit about those corridors of emotion that you can access now that you are in your forties. Well, I think just the more you go through life, the more you experience it and show up for people and go through the shit and hold other people's hands as well as having your own hand held by others. And I've gone through versions of tricky stuff, I guess, and not just once. And so I think

what happens then as an actor is that emotions that you try and not just once. And so I think what happens then as an actor is that emotions that you try and reach just simply become much more freely available to you, the older that you get, because you've lived more. And it means that, you know, things like method acting just don't really even come into my head because sometimes it is just there. And sometimes it isn't.

Like Case in Point, you just mentioned Mare of Eastown. The amount of stuff I had to create and embed in myself in order to portray a woman who was living with excruciating grief on a daily basis and hiding it from everybody, it was really hard and became extremely painful. And I still think, oh, it's gone, I've got rid of it. But then just this morning, I was asked to do something where I was watching past scenes of films I had done and commenting, had to comment on them for something. And they showed the scene in Mare

where she discovers that her son has killed himself. And I just burst into tears as I was watching it. I was like, oh God, I don't know. And so it's all sort of still there. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing or just a weird thing. But sometimes it does get, they do, you know, these things sometimes they do get stuck to the sides. And other times, depending on the character,

you can just shrug it off and walk away and go and have fish and chips with your family. Well, I also wonder if because your career has been so distinguished and fairly lengthy now, I mean, I said your first pay gig was aged 11, you cover similar territory, but sometimes from different viewpoints. So you won an Oscar for The Reader where you were playing a former SS guard. And now in Lee, you do this phenomenal portrayal of Lee Miller, the female photographer, who was one of the first on the scene at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. And so you're witnessing that portrayal of history

from different angles. And I wonder how difficult the Dakar scene was to film. Everything about Lee was really hard, I'm not gonna lie. Sometimes that's just the case, you know, independent filmmaking in any capacity is really difficult, often because you just don't have as much budget as you'd like, which then in turn means you don't have as many weeks to make your film in as you really would

ideally love. So we had that type of situation every single day, which is great and fun when you've got the right energy and being a producer on that film. I was able to step in with both feet and just bring everyone with me. Sometimes you just have to do it with a big smile on your face and look at everyone and go, no tears, it's going to be a great day. You just decide that and go and bring everyone along for the ride.

And so there was a lot of that on Lee. But that sequence, the Dachau sequence was excruciatingly painful, in particular for Andy Samberg who plays Davy Sherman in the film because he is Jewish. And he didn't want to see the set and he didn't want to walk around it. He didn't even want for us to have to establish shots by way of a rehearsal. So often you will just mark something out so cameras know where they're going to be or know what they need to hide in the background if they can see cables or bits of the set that aren't meant to be in. And we said to Andy, it's absolutely fine, the whole thing is going to be handheld, so we'll just roll the cameras and we'll just walk in. And we said to Andy, it's absolutely fine. The whole thing is going to be hand held. So we'll just roll the cameras and we'll just walk in. And it was very, very,

very hard for him because of course our set is a recreation of a camp, but nevertheless, it was terrible for him to have to go through that. And for my part, and so much of who Lee Miller was, she was stoic to say the least. She was brave, not fearless, but she was unbelievably brave and determined. And she was determined to reveal the truth, to tell the truth, and to give a voice to people who just simply didn't have one. In the same way that I now feel I often want to speak up for people who are from lower socioeconomic communities and might not be able to say something for themselves just simply because they don't have that platform. That matters to me.

And so playing Lee, I was surprised actually daily and startled by just how similar to her I really did feel as a woman in the world, as a middle-aged woman, and the courage she had as a middle-aged woman to go to war by herself. She had completely reinvented herself from a former version of who she once was as a model, as a vogue cover girl, as the

girlfriend of Muse of Man Ray. She was so done with that part of her life and wanted to become the truest version of herself that she believed she was meant to be. And that's part of the reason why we wanted to make the film, because Lee Miller is known as the Muse of Man Ray, the ex-cover girl. Well, she hated that. She famously said, I'd much rather take a photograph than be one. You watch, when people start reviewing the film,

reviewers will say, ex-Muse of Man Ray, ex-Vogue cover girl, model, lalala, worked for Condé Nast, blah, blah. People will just say it, because that has been at the forefront of her narrative. So we wanted to change the narrative and put it in a place that was the most profound decade of her life and defined who she truly was and who she stayed. She remained that resolute, stoic, brave woman who simply believed in revealing the truth. I feel that with the film we have done that and our hope is that for those who don't

know that much about Lee Miller or who have never heard of her, this will define how they now view her moving forward. And so I do feel proud to have made the film, whether people will like it, see it, feel indifferent about it, or love it, I really don't know. But I feel enormously proud of what we've done. You absolutely should. And it will have me thinking for a very long time. And I went down a whole rabbit hole of Lee Miller's work as a result of it, having known a bit about her, but as you say, not enough. You say there that you could see a similarity between yours and Lee's character and part of that being, I imagine, a commitment to truth and to showing the truth, whether it be emotional, factual, physical. But one point of

difference, I think, she says, only just having met you, is that Lee had a complicated relationship with her son, Anthony, and it struck me that you've played a number of complicated mothers in riveting ways. Little Children is a favourite role of mine. But in your real life, my impression is you're a very loving, open mother and you have constantly turned down film roles to spend more time with your children. So how does that feel when you're playing a sort of emotionally repressed mother? It's always very challenging, especially when my own emotional impulses is to be warm and embracing and yeah as you say I you know I'm extremely present for my family and continue to not work for the sake of just keeping things

steady and in a sort of domestic rhythm, which is very important for everybody. And also, which I had to do certainly when Mia and Joe were much younger because I had had two marriages and they had two different fathers. And whilst those situations have actually always been really okay, still it meant that I had to be there constant, as any mother does, but it's much harder to pull off when you have a career. And there are certain things that I may have wanted to pursue but knew that it was wrong at the time and would have been thinking of myself and not actually the immediate and

most important thing, which of course has always been the kids. So it is challenging playing tricky mothers. I don't like playing mothers who are just unkind or unsympathetic. And I did find that very challenging when prepping for the film really, because I spoke to Anthony Penrose so much. He was a creative consultant on the film. Of course, Lee Miller's son. He was heavily involved in the construction of the story and the script. And we cared very much about what he felt, what he was comfortable with,

if anything was missing, if we had written too much of one thing and less of another. And it was completely invaluable for me to have him as a friend and confidant and collaborator. And in fact, the day before I went to start shooting, I couldn't believe the moment had really come after so many years of putting this film together. I had all kinds of things I was meant to do that day, not least packing and just organizing myself for the time that I was going away to shoot.

But I had to go and buy new football boots for Bear, and I had to take the dog to the vet. There was a whole load of stuff and I just was a mess that day. I just was all over the map. My husband said to me, what can I do? I said, I think I've just got to go to Farley's again. Farley House is where Lee Miller lived when she was married to Roland Penrose and actually where she subsequently died and where there is an archive, the archive is there, it's an internationally respected art archive, but the house is still there and exists as a museum. It's in East Sussex near Lewis. And I had spent so much time there across a number of years, seven, eight years,

in and out of the archive, just being with Tony. And I just had to go again. I said, I've just got to go back one more time. Makes me emotional even to think about it. Oh my God. And so I went and I saw Tony and we both burst into tears because we couldn't believe we'd actually got to that place of like, my God, we're going to go make the film. It's really happening. And I think I just wanted his blessing one last time. It's so funny. And we went back into the archive and we touched everything again and all the real items that had belonged to Lee. I just wanted that last, and we were actually giggling a lot as well. I just think I needed that last fix of just really holding the fabric of her

and taking it away with me. And that's very unusual when you're playing a real character to have a family member who's actually there to literally and metaphorically hold your hand. And I've had that consistently with Tony and I just feel so grateful. I mean, he's her son and he's in his seventies now and he shared so much with me that isn't in any book and probably wasn't a part of any conversation he's ever had with anyone. And I was enormously, enormously grateful for that. We'll come back to Lee because it informs some of your failures, which I'm so grateful for you taking the time and putting the thought in because they're really excellent. Oh my God. Hello, Senior Producer Selena here bringing you an ad from LinkedIn.

Are you struggling to close deals? B2B selling is tougher than ever and that's why I want to tell you about LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This is a sales intelligence platform that helps you effectively engage with high profile customers, drive a higher revenue, and increase your sales performance. With Sales Navigator, you can target the right buyers, surface key signals such as which accounts you should prioritize, and show your hidden allies so you can find those buyers that are most likely to engage. Fueled by LinkedIn's 1 billion member platform,

Sales Navigator gives you the most up-to-date, first-party data enabling you to unlock conversations with the people that matter. So avoid any more failures for you and your business and sign up now. Right now you can try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a 60-day free trial at linkedin.com slash advanced. Let LinkedIn Sales Navigator help you sell like a superstar today. Just go to linkedin.com slash advanced and get started. Now, are you a business to business marketer?

If so, you know how noisy the ad space can be. Would you like a marketing platform built specifically for you to streamline the whole process? Of course you would! That's LinkedIn Ads, the platform where you can cut through the noise by precisely reaching the professionals who are more likely to find your ad relevant. Target your ideal audience by job title, industry, company, and more. You'll also have direct access to a billion members, including 180 million senior-level executives.

Plus, you'll be able to drive results with measurement tools built specifically for business to business. In technology, for example, LinkedIn generate two to five times higher return on ad spend than other social media platforms. Start converting your B2B audience into high-quality leads today. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com forward slash HTF to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com forward slash HTF. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn. The place to be, to be.

The first failure is to do with your failure as you see it to stand up to media scrutiny, particularly when you were a younger actor and people were very unkind about your body. Tell us about this. Well, I look back at it now and I just think, my God, how, first of all, how would the people around me letting that happen? You know, and of course, it's different now. There are social media platforms like X and of course, Instagram and things, none of which I have, but you often will hear that someone has defended somebody else publicly on social media. And that didn't exist, of course, back in the day. But it's just this very strange thing that used to happen to young actors and actresses.

There was almost this assumption that you were fair game, that your privacy was automatically not something you should expect to have anymore, and that you were almost game, that your privacy was automatically not something you should expect to have anymore, and that you were almost asking for it, certainly from the British press. And I was always a very normal shape. I'd never had any issues with about my physicality. I felt well, I felt strong, I felt clear-headed about my physicality. And it was only when suddenly the media decided that I was overweight when I was a size, oh my God, I don't know, 10, 12, 14, 12 again, 14 again, 10 again, 12 again, whatever. I was a young person living life and just being normal. And so what happened was that it made me reactive and defensive.

Now it is a movement. It's a movement that I feel part of, thank God, but it's a movement that I feel proud to sit back and kind of go, okay, well I know that I was at the very beginning of all of this a very, very long time ago, but maybe I could have accelerated the beginning of that movement had I really stood up for myself more. And had I stood up for myself more and been clear and called people out for abusive language, actually, it may have in turn given other actresses the inspiration to do the same. And that would have advanced that movement, I feel, just a bit more. And anything where women stand together and are using their voices

en masse is only ever a great thing. And I just wish it had come sooner. I think you're being incredibly hard on yourself. And I appreciate it. But I, from a personal perspective, I think you have done an enormous amount to normalize not even body positivity, but kind of body neutrality, that sense that my body's great, it's strong, it can do stuff, now let's leave it aside and concentrate on more important things. And I think we also underestimate at our peril how difficult the 90s were. I mean, they were a sort of, they were the badlands of people having constant opinions and those being splashed across the front pages of our tabloids for women who were constantly confused by the messaging of whether to be

LADETS or SILFs. And in the midst of that, you're still a teenager, so your first role is a major role is 17 in Heavenly Creatures. Sense and Sensibility. I was 19. You were 19. Yeah, it's ridiculous. So obviously there's going to be fluctuation and hormones during that time. But the point is, I was actually little anyway. I mean, I remember having my measurements taken for sense and sensibility and I remember the costume designer saying to me, cool, 26 and a half inch waist, I don't think I've been that since I was your age. And I remember thinking, oh, is that even a...

I wasn't even aware of like, what was a small measurement or a big measurement. I didn't even have... I didn't have a clue. But I do remember I was, I was actually quite, I was fairly petite. Yes. Yeah, you're right. The nineties, you know, that strange, strange time where it was thought that women were all meant to be a certain size and, and how on earth the media could have been so negative and not just about how people looked and how women looked,

but in general, you know, and it's one thing about this country that I do wish would change and perhaps it is a little bit, but in America, whatever people may or may not think of America and it certainly depends on where you're from, but Americans on the whole are really great at celebrating each other's achievements, saying, good for you, you did such a great job. I hope you're proud of yourself. They'll say lovely things like that, whereas here it's like, well done,

well done. And it's just say it quickly and walk away. And certainly mainstream media in the 90s did nothing other than try and knock people down. And God forbid you should be young and successful. It was almost as though they would come at it with this attitude of, oh, okay, so you think you're clever, do you? I've never thought I was clever at all. I've always thought I was lucky and had to keep working hard to stay in the game. And so it was a really rough introduction to what it was like to be famous. And it put the fear of God in me. I remember thinking, I do not want to be famous. This is terrible. This is absolutely awful. Stop it now. I really remember feeling that. And after Titanic,

actively making choices to do the smallest possible things I could find, whilst I was still learning who I was, learning how to act. You don't walk into this business and know how to do it all. You learn on the job. And I hadn't also been to drama school like RADA or hadn't been to any of those places. There never would have been the funds for something like that for me to even fantasize about something like that. And so I really did learn on the job and still do. And I just think, I just know that after Titanic, I really just needed the space to just figure out who I was as a performer and not to feel pressured into saying yes to things just because there might have been a large salary attached to

it. Fortunately for me, I've never been motivated by finances somehow. How bad did it get during this period of Titanic where you're experiencing global fame and experiencing people saying mean things about you? Is there a moment from that time that really sticks in your mind as being representative of how bad it was? I remember hiding in the cupboard once, yeah, because I could hear the paparazzi shouting outside my flat, gay, gay, gay. And I just didn't know how to switch off the sound. So I got in a cupboard.

I'm so sorry you went through that. I know. It was really rubbish, actually. They rubbish actually. They should really feel ashamed of themselves. How did you find your sense of self amidst that? Who did you turn to or was it an internal job? Well, I've always been so incredibly fortunate to have had a great family. My dad is an absolutely hilarious larger than life character who's always been an out and out realist. And my mum, she did everything that one could ever hope a mum would do. Cook great food, you'd walk into the house and there would be wonderful familiar food smells wafting through the air. There was always a Sunday lunch and usually about

16 of us sitting around a table. Just great chat. I mean, I think it was an adjustment for all of them for sure when I suddenly became famous because there's that moment where I think they were all really afraid, well, was I going to change and what are we going to do about what's going to happen now? It's definitely a strange moment for any family, I think, because it's such a surreal, weird thing to happen. And my siblings were just, you know, they always just treated me the same. And so I think that was a great leveler. And I always had that. I've always been fortunate to have great friends. And actually, somewhere in there, even then, I did know how to look after myself. I knew that if I could just get away to nature, throw myself into the sea, go for a long,

long, long walk, get blown around by the wind, then I would feel fitter for things. And that always worked and still does for me. So we've spoken a bit about the roles that you have said yes to and the choices that you made. And I suppose if I were to pick a through line, it would be something to do about women's freedom, both the presence and the absence of it. But I wonder what connects the roles that you turn down. Is there something that you read in a script and like, absolutely not for me? Yes, I cannot, cannot cope with anything that has child abuse in it of any kind, or an injury to a child, or losing a very young child. I just simply can't go, but I just have to stop reading.

And it doesn't matter how great the role might be, and how amazing the director might be, or the writing. I'm just like, I'm sorry, I just can't. Because I know that I will go through that, and it will get stuck in there, and I don't want that for my life. And so sometimes I will go through that and it will get stuck in there and I don't want that for my life. And so sometimes I will turn something down. There was something that came up actually a year and a half ago which was flipping brilliant and is going to get made with somebody else and she will be extraordinary, much better than I would have been anyway actually. But that was a hard one to turn down and it had some of those themes in it. I thought I just can't do it. Is that since you've become a mother or has that always been the case? That's always been the case. Going back to this idea of body scrutiny with Mayor of Easttown,

oh, just the best piece of television ever, there was a lot of scrutiny paid on your lack of makeup and how sort of quote unquote brave that was. Oh my God, that was so annoying. Because first of all, I had loads of makeup and how sort of quote unquote brave that was. Oh my god, that was so annoying. Because first of all, I had loads of makeup on. I really did. I mean, if it had just been completely me with a totally naked face, my skin is quite irregular actually.

I have a little bit of rosacea here and there. There's only so many bags you want to actually have under your eyes. So I mean, it wasn't loads, but I did have makeup on my face. Yeah, I did. The other thing we did do with Mare too was we added eyebrow. So my own eyebrows, to look at me,

they're quite kind of like a fashion shape and they're always really nice. And that's just the eyebrows that I got. Thank you, mum. I don't touch them. But it's interesting, when you add eyebrow or you break it up a bit, it almost breaks up the entire appearance. So we did that every single day. That was a conscious decision that we made. Obviously I didn't have any mascara on, that would have been

ridiculous. But there were things that we did to make me just not look completely like me. And the hair, that was a wig, an absolutely brilliant wig. We decided in the process, Ivana Primorak and myself, who was the hair and makeup designer who I've known since the reader, she's brilliant. She recently did Barbie, she's phenomenal. She and I work in a very collaborative way where we really do discover

the hair and the face through a lengthy process that can often go on over a number of weeks, and we'll try something out, let it sink in, take lots of pictures, have a little look, try something else. And then we started looking at, we just started looking at images of women from that particular part of Philadelphia where it's set, and the one thing that we noticed a lot was that they all had regrowth. So what does that tell you? It just simply tells you that that's a person who just doesn't have the money to go to a hairdresser's necessarily and certainly doesn't have the money to go to a hairdresser's that often. And I thought, my God, actually, if we built in this idea that she hasn't coloured her hair since her

son killed himself, that makes a lot of sense. It made a huge amount of sense. And then of course, it's not just about the hair, it's about the mental emotional attitude towards her physical appearance and her opinion of herself and how little she had started to care about her appearance. This idea of sort of bravery though is interesting in this context. And I think it came up again when you were filming Lee. So you, I understand, had three hematomas on the first day of filming, you had major injuries. Four, yeah.

Four. It's like your awards, there's always one extra. There's always one extra. Or another broken toe, oops, to match the other one. And you pushed on through. Yeah. And there's a scene where you're famously recreating this photograph, which is a surrealist picnic, and you're topless, and you hadn't been able to exercise, and I understand someone said, gosh, are you sure you're quite brave doing that?

Yeah. How do you feel about that word, brave, in this context? It's so fucking annoying. Brave is going to the front line. Brave is being an NHS nurse during COVID. You know, that's brave. It's not flipping brave to go topless or have no makeup or no Botox so that you can move your face around and morph it into different characters. That's not brave. That's just being a real person. So the use of this word brave, I think it's only because they just haven't come up with a better word yet. Maybe we can come up with one for them Yes, honest honest. Where are you now with your body? I'm great with it. I think I look flipping amazing

You do thanks. So do you oh, thank you. We have to say this to each other. We do This is the thing right? So we're so conditioned women in our 40s to think, okay, well, I'm creeping closer to the end. You know, you think you go into menopause and you're going to stop having sex and your boobs are going to sag and your skin's going to go crepey and all these things. But first of all, so what? And secondly, it's just conditioning, you know, I think women as they get older become juicier and sexier and more embedded in their truth and who they are and more powerful and more able to walk through the world and care less. And that is an empowering thing. And so I say to my friends all the time, you look amazing. Look at you. God, you look

fantastic. Don't you feel great? And just like you did then, you were like, oh, thank you. You were almost shocked to be paid a compliment by another woman. So we have to just do it. It's very important. And it doesn't mean you look great slash you've lost weight. That's the other thing, is that women often think, oh, do you think so? Oh, well, I have actually been exercising a lot recently. The interpretation of the compliment is you think I look thinner. So I'm not doing any of that anymore. So when I see my friends, I'm like, yeah, you look thinner. So I'm not doing any of that anymore. So when I see my friends, I'm like, yeah, you look amazing.

You look so well and happy and God, your skin looks clear. You look bright and there are different ways of paying a compliment. And also I think the same goes for when we compliment our children, particularly girls and any mother who's listening, please remember that I said this. There is so much negativity that young girls are hearing from the world just because how the world is, but also because very sadly, so many of them are on social media and are exposed to an unnecessary level of negativity every day of their lives. If

we do not tell them that they are beautiful and that we are so proud of who they are, they might not hear it from anyone else. So you have to say it. And there's also a way of saying to your child, I love you and you're amazing. There's that, but there's also, do you know what I love? The way you see the world and the way you dress with so much pride. I just really admire that. That will land on a teenage girl's ear much better than, you look lovely, darling. Yeah. That's in one ear and out the other because they expect us to say that. And they've heard

us say it a million times before. They're saying, my God, you look so strong and vibrant. Never ever lose the pride you take in how you walk through the world. It's amazing. So what's it like to buy your first cryptocurrency on Kraken? Well, let's say I'm at a food truck I've never tried before. Am I going to go all in on the loaded taco? No, sir. I'm keeping it simple. Starting small. That's trading on Kraken. Pick from over 190 assets and start with the 10 bucks in your pocket.

Easy. Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to powers your scale

with no preset spending limit. More cash on hand to grow your business with up to 55 interest-free days. And the ability to reach further with access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply.

Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Looking for a path to accelerate your career? Clear direction for next level success? In a place that is innovative and practical, a path to stay current and connected to industry, a place where you can be yourself, you will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Your second failure is that you wish you hadn't stopped dance classes.

When did you take dance classes? How old were you? So when I was younger, you know, there's that thing that families do if they go off on holiday and they go to Spain or they might go skiing and they might do this. To this day, very sadly, my entire family never ever got on a plane and went on a holiday anyway. I say very sadly, I'm not sad about it at all and I never was even at the time, but we just didn't have those kinds of holidays. There was no way my parents could have afforded even the cheap seats at the back of a plane for all six of us to go. And so activities at weekends where some people might do things like expensive

lessons for something, we could do dance classes at the local YMCA which cost 50p. So we would all go and do 50p dance classes and I think I started doing that when I was about six. My older sister would have been nine and then my younger sister at the time was, yeah, she was three. and lo and behold We were actually all quite good at it. I became very very good at tap dancing I was a really good tap dancer extremely good and I loved it. I loved the precision of it I loved remembering the sequences I just adored tap and you have to be light on your feet and you also have to be very in your body as well

To be a dancer you have to be extremely in your body as well to be a dancer. You have to be extremely in touch with your physical self and use your physical self to express different forms of emotion when you're not using words, you're using your body or your feet. And so I just did it for years, really did it a lot between the age of 11 and 16. And of course, the one thing that I didn't think about or didn't realise that was happening to me as I was doing so many hours of dance every week was that I was so fit, I was so strong, and so I was much more flexible than I am now as well. And I left school and I just sort of stopped. And I think it was probably because I just had to get a job and I had to be in the world and I had to, as you said in your lovely introduction,

I did have to earn the money for the train fares to go to London for auditions, so I just had to carry on. And of course at that point dance classes probably did cost like £3.50 rather than just £50p. There was no way I could do that when I needed that money for the auditions. So I feel sad because there is a certain level of fitness that a dancer who's danced all their lives really does have that I envy. I don't want my body to break. I don't want it to break down. I don't want to get injured. So, for me now, exercise, the occasions when I have enough time to really do it, exercise

for me is not actually about looking a certain way. It's about not getting injured so I don't hurt myself in my life because I always want to swim in the cold water and I always want to be able to hike for five hours, I always want to be able to give my son a piggy back even though he's 10 and it kind of hurts now and I always want to be able to carry my own stuff, carry my own luggage you know those things matter and physical fitness when you're filming is really important because the stamina you have to have is people don't really believe it, it does look so glamorous I And physical fitness when you're filming is really important because the stamina you have to have is, people don't really believe it.

It does look so glamorous, I know, but my goodness gracious me, you know, we are up at 3.30 in the morning sometimes and in the car on the way to work at 10 past four. And I still feel excited by that. I still get up with the feeling of, God, it's like having a secret. I love it. I just love it but then you'll go to work and you'll sit in hair and makeup and you will be on set filming by 7 30 a.m and you'll shoot till 7 30 p.m and then you go home and you quickly hurry up and have some dinner and do the things you need to do and learn your lines and you know be ready go to sleep and wake

up at 3 30 the next morning and do it all again. And on The Regime last year, for example, we had a 106 day shoot and I was in almost everything. So you have to have resilience and stamina and a lot of that does come with just making sure that you're fit and well. The Regime, because it was one of the ones I didn't have time to put in the introduction, is where you play the Eastern European dictator of a fictional country and it's another HBO series. But so when you're filming you don't have time to exercise presumably. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. It does just depend on actually the size of the role and the length of the shoot. And funnily enough I found on the regime we had a lot of really tight costumes, which was weird for me

because I don't sort of wear my body like that. I don't wear those sort of things anymore. I don't know why. I just morphed away from that. So that was quite weird. I was like, oh God, all these tight things that might rip and blind me. And sometimes having to be quite physically active in these costumes. So I did think to myself, should I probably should be exercising more? And I just didn't have time. And anytime I try and do a really great power yoga on a Sunday or something, I would just, I'd put a rib out or I'd hurt my neck or you know, something. And it was one of those things I just had to go easy on myself and let it go.

I was just like, it doesn't matter. Just, it's more important that you don't feel in pain at work. Just leave it. Just leave it. You just, you've got to just learn your lines, go to work, do your job, go home, do it all over again. That's tap dancing. Back to your job. Go home, do it all over again. Back to tap dancing. Back to tap dancing.

Would you ever take it up again? I'd love to, but I don't know if my body would let me. Rather annoyingly, about nine years ago, I broke the joint in my right toe on set. Actually, sadly, someone dropped something on my foot, and I had to just carry on working. I just strapped it up and just had on my foot. And I had to just carry on working. I just strapped it up and just had to carry on. And I had broken it and I had to just stay off it. And that's the thing with toe joints, you just have to leave them alone and they eventually get

better. And lo and behold, about four years ago, it just permanently was hurting. And I thought, and so I had an x-ray and they said, yeah, that's you have got osteoarthritis in that joint. x-ray and they said yeah that's you've you have got osteoarthritis in that joint and so the joint itself locks out at a certain point so there's a lot I can't do so tap dancing for you I still have my tap shoes they're beautiful but there's a lot that I can't do because I just actually can't get up high enough on my toes to be as light as you need to be to tap but I do love it. Before we get onto your third failure just because I'll only get this opportunity once. So I love Sense and Sensibility, the 1995 adaptation of Austin's novel adapted by Emma Thompson. And I remember at the time seeing a TV interview with you, where you

spoke about Ang Lee and working with Ang Lee, and how kind of enigmatic he was to begin with and how after the first day's filming you asked him what his opinion was of you. Do you remember this story? Oh yeah. Oh will you tell it again? Oh my god, I will never forget it. You're lucky because my long term memory is extraordinary. My short term memory is just dreadful and I can't remember what happened last week. However, my memory for dialogue is really still exceptionally good and I can remember dialogue from past things which is annoying. But so, Sense of us quite loud shrieking English actors, embracing each other every two minutes and stuffing our faces with buns. He must have thought we were completely mad, but he didn't say

very much and his direction with me was phenomenally subtle. And on the first day, I did have quite a lot to shoot on the first day and I was terrified and I just kept thinking they're gonna they might just replace me and I'm gonna get fired because it was a mistake them asking me anyway really I think they just read the wrong name off the list and then just didn't have the heart to tell me that they'd actually asked the wrong girl to come and play the part I mean I was so in my head about the whole thing it was really horrifying but at the end of the first day I went to Ang and he'd said nothing to me and I thought I'm just gonna ask you know I said so how you know was it okay was everything okay and he looked me with a smile and he put his hand on my shoulder and he went oh you'll

get better I promise you and I was like okay yeah right that's told me went to the trailer burst into tears and I thought okay no I'm not gonna tell anyone because there's that thing they say they do say you know it's tough at the top and you just got to keep going and I just okay okay deep breath be brave and just and so I was I just thought okay deep breath be brave get on with it and try and ignore it and just pretend that hasn't happened and that was what I did and then about halfway through the shoot I told Emma Thompson that he'd said that and she went went, oh my God, oh my God! Oh my God, darling!

Why didn't you tell me that's my... I'm going to go and talk to him right now, that was mean, he should never have done that. Don't say anything, don't say anything! And she couldn't believe it. And I felt so much better to think that she also agreed that that was probably a pretty unfair thing to have said to a young actress playing a lead role in a really important film with lots of fancy actors in it.

But it's okay, you know, all these things, you sort of, you learn to, you learn to become more resilient, don't you? Even Woody Allen, I remember him saying to me, do it better. You're just doing, you're just doing it like a bad actress. What? Oh yeah. I'd be like, not helpful. Go over there there please.

Good. No, when I did say that I was like, that's not helpful actually, you can just go over there. I couldn't cope. That's kind of extraordinary. Yeah. I mean you have worked with phenomenal legendary directors. Yeah. I really have. Danny Boyle, Sam Mendes who you were married to. Yeah. But it brings us onto your third failure. And I was so interested you chose this. Which is your failure to have directed yourself. Why did you choose this? I chose this because it's something that I haven't really said.

People will say to me often, you know, do you ever think you might like to direct? And I always say, oh no, God, please don't make me, you know, not yet, one day. I mean, the first thing is directing is a huge job. People don't really understand. You know, you conceive of the project half the time and you will develop it with a writer. Or even if you're a director for hire and you come at something with a screenplay fully written,

you then have to cast it, you then have to crew it. You then have to go in the pre-production process, which is usually on an independent film, it can be anything from, you know, seven to 12 weeks. So that's the process when the film is actually built, you construct the story, the costumes, the sets, the locations are found, that your production team comes on board. I mean, there is a lot that goes into it. And the director is the leader, you know, the leader who takes everyone through that and establishes the creative tone and the narrative for the piece. Then you shoot. The filming part is just the middle bit. And the actors will come in for, if it's an independent film, it can be anything like Lee was nine weeks, it can be 11 weeks, Eternal Sunshine was 14 weeks, Sense and Sensibility was 11 and a half weeks, I remember, you know, or Titanic was seven and a half months. The regime last year, as I said,

was six full months. It was 106 days. 104, I can't remember. And then when you wrap the shooting process, the director doesn't draw breath. They then go right into the edit. And then when the edit's done, then you go into the scoring. Then you go into the final mix, then you do the colour correct. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And as a producer, I now know you also oversee all of those things and are largely involved in that process too, which I have loved. But I think so many people will say to me on film sets, people I work with and know well, whether it's an actor or a crew member, they will say, now why aren't you directing? And I'll go, no, no, no, please don't say it, stop saying it. Why does everyone keep saying it? And people say it to me often.

And I know why I haven't done it is because it's a very long time and it's a huge commitment. And I have always had a family. I had Mia when I was 25 years old. And so there's just no way I would have ever been able to do it. But the more I'm not doing it now with the need to change the culture, the more I feel like I'm actually letting down other women by not doing it. And I'm really starting to feel that in quite a loud way. There's no plans to actually do that in the immediate future, but I do feel that I love being in a room full of actors. There's a language that you have as actors that you share with each other that is quite unique. And I think to direct actors, knowing what that language is, knowing how to say very, very little to an actor, and actually it can land in a meaningful way,

and they can completely change what they're doing. Or to go up to an actor and say, just audition a different idea for this one, and they go, ooh! And they'll rub their hands together and be really excited because perhaps you're rethinking the entire scene for a moment, and other stuff might come up. And I have been on the receiving end of some terrific direction myself, and I've also been on the receiving end of some terrific direction myself, and I've also been on the receiving end of some destructive direction that you

have to kind of block out because it might not help. And sometimes too much direction is a terrible thing for an actor because then they'll lose their thread. And lo and behold, the great thing that they were raw and ready to do when they walked in the room, they will have completely forgotten. I know a lot about the technical side of filmmaking now, really a lot, and actually I love the technical side of filmmaking. So I know about lenses now, I know about shot composition, I know a bit about lighting. Like there are things that you pick up along the way and you know it's like producing. People would say to me in my 20s and 30s, oh you know, so are you going to produce

your own stuff now? And I would think,, no, I wouldn't know how to produce. What are you talking about? It's a completely different job. But I only did that at the time in my life when I felt that I had learned enough and actually understood what the job was. And there's no way I'm ever going to do something unless I really know how to do it properly. So I think with producing, I had gotten to that point and then produced Lee, sometimes almost single-handedly before my producing partner Kate Solomon came on and we very much did it together. And at one point covering the wages for the entire crew.

Yeah, we had a really terrifying moment where there was two weeks and we were waiting for a piece of investment to arrive and just because of how the bank systems work and it just got stuck and just was delayed. We were like, what are we gonna do? And I said, don't worry, I'm just gonna sort it. We're just gonna carry on. We're not gonna stop. We're just gonna carry on.

So yeah, sometimes that is what happens with independent film. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter how long I've been doing this. Sometimes, yeah, shit flies. So there is this desire to learn the skills before you commit to it that you have. But how much do you think it's also to do with sexism within the industry? Sort of institutionalised

sexism in a way where the whole structure is quite sexist, where as a woman it is difficult to be taken seriously, potentially more so than if you were a man? It's a big, big subject to discuss. I think it's a lot better. And I think that because since Me Too, I think we are not just craving women's stories more than ever, but we are hearing them, receiving them, and really listening in a way that we just didn't know how to before. Look, whether you like it or not, so often in life, men are brought up to believe that they can just choose to do anything. And it's so often the woman who is at home taking care of the children, you know. But that dynamic has, of course, changed dramatically. I mean, certainly in my situation, I go out to work, Ned keeps the home fires burning. I mean not literally because we typically all go together but that is what we do.

And I know many, many couples like that now. However what I will say is that I think women are learning to walk through the world believing that they have as much right as their male counterparts, but really believing it. Not sort of making themselves believe it and not having to prove themselves as much. Although I do know a female director who I was having a conversation with a few years ago and I happened to say to her, God, your hair color is fantastic. She went, Oh yeah, I just had it done. I'm so gray. Oh God, I just can't, I can't leave it any more than about five weeks now. I said, interesting. I said, why do you not just let it be gray? And she went, do you think anyone wants to employ a gray haired 62 year old female director? And I

looked at her and I put my hand over my mouth and I went, oh my god, you're right. And I thought, bloody hell actually. Men can carry on doing it forever. Yes. And so should women be able to. And that's why we have to be grateful for people like Nancy Meyers, Jane Campion, Jocelyn Morehouse. You know, these are women who are of a certain age now and they are still directing films.

And so we just got to step in girls. And so I feel like, okay, I've just got to get on with it. And do you feel that because of your desire or because you feel this responsibility to the sisterhood? It's my desire first, but I think the sort of the urgency I feel on behalf of the sisterhood is really profound. I mean, I keenly feel that. And I think the more of us that are doing it, the more we will be inspiring others to do it. You know, the less fearful we are of that dynamic, that world that we will be walking into, which is still male dominated, but the less fearful we are and

the more prepared we are to just stand on our own two feet and say, I'm going to do it too, watch, the more others will do it. And so I feel it's kind of both things. Kate Winslet, you have exceeded every single expectation I have. They were already sky high. I can't thank you enough for standing up for us and for giving us voice and for being such an extraordinary actress, yes, but an even better person. Thank you so much for coming on How to Fail. Oh, thank you. But you know, I just want to say it matters to be a decent human being.

What we put into the world does vibrate back to you. And not just that, but the world is a hard place to live in at the moment. And I think since COVID, we are even more aware of how tough it is on people's mental health, just to sometimes get through the day. And if we can lead with a little bit of integrity and kindness, we'll all be better off. Preach. I didn't even get to ask you about the holiday, but maybe we'll do that on Failing with Friends. We'll do that another time. But you're sticking around for Failing with Friends, we're going to do listener failures

and questions very quickly. Okay, great. Wonderful. Thank you. That was... Pleasure. Beautiful. Pleasure. Absolute pleasure. Do follow us to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Share a link and spread the love.

This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. Share a link and spread the love. This is an Elizabeth Day in Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.