Kate Winslet has spoken out about the bullying she endured as a child, telling her former classmates: 'You were bloody horrible to me, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.' The Oscar-winning actress made the comments during an appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
Winslet, who was born in Reading in 1975, recalled being locked in an art cupboard and teased about her weight. She said the bullying left her struggling with her self-image even after her breakout role in Titanic in 1997. 'My whole world was totally turned upside down. I have so much to be grateful for. But I wasn’t in a particularly good place around my physical self at all,' she said.
The actress also criticised the British tabloids for targeting her after Titanic, calling their behaviour 'an utter disgrace'. She said they called her 'awful, terrible, actually abusive names' and went through her bins to find shopping receipts to check what she was eating.
Winslet, who attended Redroofs School for the Performing Arts in Maidenhead, revealed that her mother Sally made it clear she would have to fund her own school fees by doing voiceover work. 'Luckily I was really good at accents,' she said, adding that she earned £60 or £65 a day, which went straight into the school fees pot.
She also shared the story of how she got her first major role in Peter Jackson's 1994 film Heavenly Creatures while working behind a deli counter in Reading. 'I was in the middle of making a sandwich. Chris, the manager, stuck his head out the door and said, 'Kate, phone for you,'' she recalled.
