Kate Winslet: “The media called me fat!” Why I’m embracing wrinkles and championing women
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Grief can make you feel unnervingly vulnerable; this is how Kate Winslet reflects on losing her mum in 2017. In this chat, Fearne and Kate share their own experiences of both grieving and co-parenting at Christmas.
Regularly labelled as “fat” by the media, Kate explains what effect that scrutiny had on her self-esteem, and why it’s made her even more passionate about setting an example to younger women by ageing naturally.
Kate also offers advice on how to live by your own gut instinct, rather than other people’s opinions, and how to approach difficult conversations with loved ones.
Having recently made her directorial debut, Kate talks through what really goes on behind the scenes on a set, the safe environment she hopes to create for her actors, and the double standards applied to men and women in the film industry.
Goodbye June is in cinemas from December 12th, and on Netflix on December 24th.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show that moves you towards living life on |
| 0:06.7 | your terms. Today, I'm chatting to Kate Winsler. The mainstream media in the UK, |
| 0:12.0 | it's no secret, were absolutely horrific to me because they decided I was fat. Well, what do you |
| 0:18.2 | think that does to a person's self-esteem? And that's why looking like a normal |
| 0:22.4 | person, having a face that moves, having all of the wrinkles that my 50 years hopefully show, |
| 0:28.5 | that matters a great deal because, again, you can't live your life trying to change the opinions |
| 0:34.1 | of other people. It doesn't work. You'll make yourself miserable. Now, I cannot tell you how excited I was about this. And I mentioned this at the start of the chat. |
| 0:41.5 | When I was 14 years old, me and one of my best mates, who's still one of my best mates today, |
| 0:45.8 | Ali Bowers, became utterly obsessed with Titanic. And if you're about my age, you were probably |
| 0:53.3 | the same. We had a cinema in the local town harrow |
| 0:56.7 | in a shopping centre called the st an centre going to the st an centre was the most fun thing ever |
| 1:03.0 | we'd get the train from eastcoat to harrow get like so many penny sweets we felt sick by the end |
| 1:09.3 | and we would sit there watching Titanic. |
| 1:11.6 | We did this four times. |
| 1:14.1 | Four times. |
| 1:15.0 | I don't know how we found the money to do it, |
| 1:16.9 | but we cobbled together however much it was to go to the cinema back then |
| 1:20.3 | and watch Titanic four times. |
| 1:23.1 | Even when I'm watching it now, I can recite, I reckon, 50% of the dialogue and also some facial expressions. |
| 1:30.3 | Like, I, it's so ingrained in my brain. I know it better than some of my relatives. So that is the sense of excitement I'm talking about. And obviously, I've followed Kate's career since. And obviously, it's nearly Christmas. And I have to watch the holiday. That for me is like it truly starts Christmas and I bloody love that film. |
| 1:49.0 | So obviously I had to get that out my system before she walked in the room. |
| 1:53.7 | Kate Winsler needs no introduction whatsoever. |
... |
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