Kate Winslet has been acting for nearly two thirds of her life. Now, at 44, a cultural reckoning, a global pandemic, and a remarkable new film role have caused the Oscar winner to reevaluate her career choices.

In a wonderfully frank, free-roaming conversation with Vanity Fair this week, Winslet said she regretted collaborating with two controversial filmmakers, remembered a troubling moment on the set of her first film, and admitted to deep reservations about the excesses of movie promotion and awards seasons (“It’s always been so baffling to me—the hoopla and the wasted money that could be better put to making more independent films, number one, or building fucking classrooms.”) Her goal moving forward is to shed all complacency about the messages that her movies send out to the world, as well as the way in which they are made.

Winslet has three children, and is married to Ned Rocknroll (born Ned Abel Smith), the nephew of business mogul Richard Branson. Her new movie, Francis Lee’s Ammonite, premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday. In it, Winslet plays the real-life paleontologist Mary Anning. She told VF that the powerful love story at the center of the film, with a grief-stricken young married woman played by Saoirse Ronan, was “one of the most joyful experiences of my career.”

Vanity Fair: What is the quarantine experience like for you these days?

The focus more than anything has been getting the kids safely back at school. I’m trundling along with life. Obviously, we’re not just like everyone else because we live in a nice house, and we’re comfortable…. We’re just so lucky and don’t have anything to fucking complain about ever, frankly. We’re just trying to make the best of an extraordinary fucking global disaster. It’s just horrendous, isn’t it?

It’s eerie how similar what is happening was to your film Contagion. Did you see that people were streaming it on Netflix in record numbers after the coronavirus hit?

Yeah, and I was like, “What are they all fucking doing? It’s a scary film. Stop watching that.”

How do you hope Hollywood will change after this? There has to be some aspect of working remotely for you that’s nice. The fact that we can be doing this interview from home without makeup and just––

Exactly. And actually I’m wearing an old bathrobe because, to be completely honest with you, none of my pants fit me at the moment.

I’m in my pajamas and just combed my hair. That was the extent of my cosmetic preparation.

I just took a shower because I was like, “I’ve got to do something for the poor woman.” I think the question of how Hollywood will change is probably not something that any of us could fully answer quite this far out. But it is clearly changing significantly. Just experiencing the little bit of press that I have been doing to support Ammonite…I love not getting into those fucking dresses and those fucking shoes. All the money. It’s always really pained me, the money that gets wasted on colossal, great big junkets: flying journalists, actors, glam squads all over the world. Why the hell is any of that important? If I cared what I looked like, I would have put makeup on right now.

It’s always been so baffling to me—the hoopla and the wasted money that could be better put to making more independent films, number one, or building fucking classrooms. Jesus Christ, you know?

For me, there’s a lot that’s already changed. I’ve said to the people who help me with press, “If any of the bans are lifted anytime soon, and the requests come in for me to fly places, can you apologize and say I won’t be doing that because it’s a waste of air travel?” It’s appalling—putting ourselves into the sky left, right, and center. There’s only so much a person can stomach before your morals come into play. We’re still able to do all the things that need to get done without pumping biofuels into a beautiful, beautiful fading world.

Do you feel the same way about award shows moving forward?

I’m afraid I think I kind of do. The dresses, the stress, the dress fittings…It’s so stressful, and I know that sounds like, “Oh, here goes Kate Winslet talking about how stressful it is to do dress fittings for award shows.” But it is stressful. I don’t like having to squeeze my hot-and-bothered mum-on-the-school-run body randomly into a red carpet dress that I’m never going to wear again. The money that’s wasted on it. The hours and stress that people pour into these things. The incredible artists who make these dresses are wonderful, but to make something that’s only going to be worn once…I’ve already decided I’m doing repeat dresses. Everything will have to be let out, but whatever.

Your character in Ammonite, Mary Anning, is so heartbreakingly isolated. How are you able to go to those dark places for long periods of filming when you are a hands-on mother?

Ammonite was filmed in Dorset, which is exactly a two-hour drive from where I’m sitting. I spent about three nights out of five down there by myself. Then my husband would come with our little one and one of the old ones normally…but I’m very fortunate to be in a position where my husband is in the home doing all of the things that I would ordinarily be doing. I always find it so strange talking about process and not sounding like a complete fucking asshole because who wants to hear about an actor’s process—especially at a time like now.

But to go into just some basic details, I tried to be isolated. I don’t have assistants on set or stuff like that. I never have. I drove myself to and from work just because I needed to be in Mary’s headspace. I was able to stay in a rented house that belongs to some family friends of ours. It’s a very small, small house that sits right on a heavily pebbled beach right by the cliffs…. When the wind would blow, the whole place would rattle and shake. I know that sounds a little bit possibly indulgent, but that helped me—to be living alone, tucked away, being buffeted by the elements in the way that Mary would. If in doubt, just go back to basics: Put yourself as near to the situation as you possibly can.

What else helped you get into the character’s mindset?

There’s very little written about [the real-life Mary] in terms of physical description. A couple of people described her as being very thin and worn and pinched…but I didn’t want to do that because this isn’t supposed to be a biopic. Also, I felt it was very important to be able to carry the weight of the manual laboring life that was so much a part of who Mary was. There’s a solidity and a heftiness to her that I wanted to create. That just meant physically doing a few things a little differently and letting go of all vanity. I mean, no makeup.

And I’m older now. I’m about to turn 45, and shit moves. [Winslet pulls at her face.] Even when I saw the film, I was like—truly, with a smile in my heart—I was like, “Oh, look at my neck doing that little, slightly different thing now. Isn’t that interesting?” Actually, I quite enjoyed noticing those things about myself because they did go hand in hand with Mary and it’s lovely to see that roughness of her—the worn, gnarled, worked things in her body. We focused on making all of that apparent. We would hold my hand up to Saoirse’s [for shots]. I’d go, “Fucking hell, Saoirse, look at my hand and your beautiful, little, delicate, tiny hand. My youthful years have gone.”

Physically, with my own body, I was determined to allow for the differences in my own womanly self to be seen—and not to cover them up with makeup or hide them. It wouldn’t have been right for Mary. And it’s also not honoring the age I am now and those changes. I don’t think we see enough of that in films.

What about Mary made you want to play her?

She was a woman of pure integrity. She was impoverished, uneducated, and completely self-taught…. She found her first ichthyosaurs at the age of 11, for God’s sake. And it took almost a year to dig it out. She lived an extremely frugal existence. She just got on with it. She just accepted that she lived in a time of systemic repression, a patriarchal society that dictated that her successes would never be seen or celebrated in her lifetime. And yet she didn’t complain. She was compassionate and she was kind.

After seeing Ammonite, I went back and read about all of the incredible things Mary accomplished—and was mad that I hadn’t heard of her sooner. But there are countless women whose accomplishments have gone unrecognized. Did you feel outraged when you first learned about Mary?

Of course I was outraged, but these are things that we’ve come to know of the way that female success has been written out of history, or never even written in. Mary Anning was a woman whose successes—her scientific achievements—were robbed from her by greedy rich men who weren’t as clever as she was. Completely fucking outrageous. That’s why these stories are so important. It’s important that we know that great women came before us and did extraordinary things. She’s the reason why we know about ichthyosaurs and we know what coprolites are—which is dinosaur poop, basically. From her discovering that, we know what dinosaurs ate. She discovered dinosaur shit, goddammit.

When the film was announced last year there was some controversy about the romance at its center, with critics taking issue with Mary having a same-sex relationship when it hasn’t been proven that she was homosexual. But it also hasn’t been proven that she was heterosexual.

It’s not supposed to be a biopic and there really isn’t any evidence at all to suggest that she had relationships with women or with men. This was Francis Lee’s interpretation. With Ammonite, Francis created a story about two people who fall in love. That they are of the same sex is never addressed or explained—it just is, pure and simple. This storytelling is so crucial to the progression and the evolution of the way audiences in the world view LGBTQ people and their relationships—by telling these stories that normalize and express same-sex love without hesitation or fear or secrecy. To be able to play this character who shows that level of affection and expression for someone of the same sex has been one of the most joyful experiences of my career.

We’re so conditioned to experiencing the traditional setups around romantic ideals onscreen…. But when you remove those conventional stereotypes, it’s like a breath of fresh air. Everything becomes equal. The sincerity and the equality of the connection and the space for longing and stillness just goes through the roof. It was so wonderful and it felt powerful to take part in it.

Does that lens make you look back on your previous projects differently?

It made me question whether, in the past, I was just complacent and just rolled with tradition in that sort of automatic way that we all sometimes do. When a woman takes the lead in a movie, it’s always written that she is feisty or taking control…. Why can’t she just be turned on? Why can’t she just know what she wants?

I’m learning a good deal about same-sex relationships and how they’re perceived and debated because of Ammonite and because the relationship between these two female characters isn’t hidden.

When you say you wonder if you’ve contributed to that stereotype in the past, are you thinking back to specific roles?

No, as a general thing. It just gave me pause. Was I automatically just letting myself be a little lady being wooed? It made me feel mad.

Something else to consider as well is that these stories that we’re talking about, like Ammonite—they’re talked about in a very different way than heterosexual love stories. Why is that? Why, in same-sex love stories does the line of questioning have to turn so quickly to the more intimate scenes? I have never been asked the same level of questions when I’ve been in equivalent scenes with a man. I’ve been in intimate scenes with women in both Heavenly Creatures, the first film I ever did, and Holy Smoke!, and I am reminded today with Ammonite how shocked and affronted I felt when I was repeatedly asked, “What was it like to kiss a girl?” Out of all the questions that I could have been asked, that one always came about. Why?

So it brought up new stuff for me, this whole experience. It made me feel a little bit mad at myself that maybe I haven’t taken enough responsibility for how I might have allowed a character to be portrayed in heterosexual relationships onscreen in the past. I feel so fortunate to have been in a position for a good many years where I could hold my own, keep my head down, and try and produce decent work…but it’s easy to lose one’s voice along the way and to lose sight of the responsibility that comes with that. And I don’t want to fuck that up. I know that I can always do better.

Has the #MeToo movement played any part in this realization?

I think it’s only starting to play a part now that I’ve actually seen the film and seen what Francis has done with the relationship. It’s so loving, so tender, and so beautiful. Ammonite has made me really aware of being even more committed to honoring what women want to be saying for themselves in films and how we really want to be portrayed, regardless of sexual orientation. Because life is fucking short and I’d like to do my best when it comes to setting a decent example to younger women. We’re handing them a pretty fucked up world, so I’d like to do my bit in having some proper integrity.

It’s like, what the fuck was I doing working with Woody Allen and Roman Polanski? It’s unbelievable to me now how those men were held in such high regard, so widely in the film industry and for as long as they were. It’s fucking disgraceful. And I have to take responsibility for the fact that I worked with them both. I can’t turn back the clock. I’m grappling with those regrets but what do we have if we aren’t able to just be fucking truthful about all of it?

You said you hate being asked about the Ammonite love scenes, but I love the fact that you choreographed them with Saoirse. What led you to assert yourself in that way and tell Francis that you were going to handle it yourself?

It’s funny because, even then, I was like, “Hang on. Check yourself Kate: Have you honored yourself by contributing to the construction of these scenes [in the past]?” Sometimes yes and sometimes no, I realize. I didn’t always. I would sometimes walk into the room and [go along with directions] even if it was a little thing, like the director saying, “We’d like to have you two over there in the corner by the window because the light’s good,” yet the [setup] made my character look more feminine or look more lusted after or something.

[It should have been] me walking into the room and saying, “Hang on. No, I don’t want to sit in the fucking window. That’s stupid, stereotypical, make-the-woman-look-good-by-the-fucking-nice-flattering-light shit. I don’t want to do that. Can we find an alternative?”

Are you going to have these kinds of conversations with other actresses, about taking responsibility and control of the content you create? Or have you already?

I suppose I have slightly…though I’m not on some crusade, a hundred percent not. But there’s a young actress who plays my daughter in [the upcoming HBO limited series] Mare of Easttown, her name is Angourie Rice. She’s Australian and she plays an LGBTQ character and there’s an intimate scene between her and another character. She’s a year younger than my daughter Mia and I felt automatically protective of her doing this scene because, suddenly, the two camera operators were men. I was actually done for the day—it was a night shoot and I had wrapped that morning. But I said, “I’m just going to stay here and be here for you.”

It didn’t require an intimacy coordinator either because it was just kissing and tenderness in the car. But sometimes it’s very hard when you’re young to know how to have a conversation about intimacy in your own room, let alone in the workplace. So I said, “I will say the things that you can’t actually make your mouth say. Just tell me.” And I actually ended up being in the trunk of the car, screwed up in a little ball, just so they weren’t alone in the car with two men who, by the way, are completely lovely, respectful, seasoned camera operators. But still, she was young and it was a potential trigger moment for her. I didn’t want for her to feel that way.

[The Zoom call ends suddenly. Winslet calls back from her cell phone.]

My iPad got too hot, and it gave me a message that I’ve never seen before. It said, “Emergency. Cool your iPad down.” There we go.

Did you have a costar who looked out for you early on in your career?

No, I never had that. Maybe that’s why I feel it more keenly now, because that was distinctly lacking. This is a story I’ve never told, and I funnily enough remembered it when I was thinking about the things you might ask me in this interview. When I did an intimate scene on Heavenly Creatures, they were a lovely crew of people and they were so kind to myself and Melanie [Lynskey], and we never felt vulnerable, we never felt exposed. But one of the camera boys—as we’re lining up a shot, and we’re both in our little undies, naked from the waist up—I heard him as an aside say to someone else, “Well, I guess it’s hard-dicks day, boys.”

I was like, “Uh,” but I did this weird thing that you do when you’re younger of just going, “Well, that wasn’t very nice, but we’d better not say anything.” And so I just carried on. I must have sort of buried it, because I had forgotten. But now it’s crystal clear. I can actually remember what the guy looked like. I remember his name, and he really was a nice guy, but when you’re younger, you do this nonsense thing of just thinking, “That’s what men say.” And they do it sometimes like they’re breathing…. I don’t know a single girl, actually, who hasn’t experienced some level of harassment on that level. Even if they’re just words, they’re so powerful. It’s like bullying.

That’s so devastating to think of a teenager, already putting herself in such a vulnerable position, hearing that.

Yeah, right? By the way, I really, genuinely could not fault for one second the experience I had on Heavenly Creatures overall, and I actually would almost hold it up as being my most treasured film experience, because it was just so lucky that I was given that part. But it’s just that one flicker of a moment.

Has having sons changed the roles you take?

Yeah, absolutely. The mother/son relationship is so discernibly different to the relationship with a daughter. That’s actually something that has come into place with me quite a lot on Mare of Easttown for reasons that I actually can’t divulge…. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot and using a lot for my job. [Winslet pauses]. It’s such a weird job. Why the hell do I do it? It still baffles me. I’m still so tormented by it, but I do still love it.

Even though I’m dreading going to work in this time that we now live, I’m so excited to see everybody. You do form these really great connections with people and, sometimes, if you’re lucky, friendships that will last hopefully a lifetime. Ellen Kuras, who was the cinematographer on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is like a sister to me. Emma Thompson and I are still really, really close. It was wonderful to repeat the experience of working with Gemma Jones. She played my mother in Sense and Sensibility, and then [I got] to work with her again on Ammonite. Keeping good, grounding women of integrity in one’s life is a blessing.

I love hearing that you and Emma Thompson are in contact still. What’s the nature of your friendship these days?

The nature of our friendship actually for the last year has been lots of long, hilarious text messages with her going, “Winslet, where the fuck are you? We haven’t seen you for ages. You must be about 100 by now.” Then, sending each other photographs of our lunches and things like photos showing how full our glass of wine is on a Friday night. There’s been a lot of that.

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