Acclaimed actress Kate Winslet has delivered a powerful and personal account of the severe bullying she endured as a child, revealing it directly led to a damaging eating disorder she now describes as the 'only thing in my life I really regret'.
Vicious Taunts From Classmates and Teachers
The 50-year-old star spoke candidly on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, hosted by Lauren Laverne. She detailed how torment began in primary school, where she was teased with the cruel nickname 'Blubber' and even locked in art cupboards by her peers.
Winslet, who was not overweight, attributed the bullying to having 'stocky thighs'. The situation worsened when she won her first major acting role at 15, sparking envy. 'They hated me then,' she recalled, describing how her desk was pushed into a corner by other girls who moved theirs away.
The bullying was not confined to students. A female drama teacher told a young Winslet she would only have a career if she was 'happy to settle for the fat girl parts'. This comment, Winslet explained, was a key factor in sparking her eating disorder.
A Long-Term Battle With Food and Regret
The actress stated she was 'on and off diets from the age of 15 to 19', a pattern that escalated into dangerously unhealthy habits. 'Eventually, I was hardly eating at all,' she confessed.
She described the mental toll, where waking up each morning was dominated by the panic-ridden thought: 'Oh my God, do I look fatter?' This fixation, she said, persisted for a very long time and is the source of her profound regret.
Winslet had a blunt message for her former bullies: 'You lot who were in my year at school, you were bloody horrible to me, and you should be ashamed.'
Forging a Thick Skin and a Stellar Career
Despite the trauma, Winslet developed resilience. She learned to have 'a pretty thick skin' and deliberately made her tormentors 'as insignificant as I could possibly make them'. She refused to let them derail her determined trajectory.
That trajectory led to an illustrious career, making her one of the most respected actresses of her generation. Her roles range from Rose in Titanic to Juliet Hulme in Heavenly Creatures and a former Nazi camp guard in The Reader, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2008.
Now also a director and producer, having made her debut with Netflix's Goodbye June this year, Winslet remains an outspoken critic of Hollywood's beauty pressures. She champions playing characters with wrinkles and changing bodies, stating simply: 'That's life.'
