Kate Winslet Opens Up About Her First Intimate Experiences Being With Women
Speaking on a recent podcast, Winslet shared a personal detail about her adolescence while revisiting the film that launched her career.
Featured image by John Clark/BAFTA via Getty Images
Actor Kate Winslet has revealed that her “first intimate experiences” as a teenager were with women, a disclosure she said she had never shared publicly before. She made the comment while discussing her breakout role in the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures and the personal experiences that helped shape her understanding of the story’s intense emotional center.
Speaking on the Team Deakins podcast, Winslet reflected on her work in the Peter Jackson–directed drama and how elements of her own adolescence informed her portrayal of Juliet.
“I’ll share something I’ve never shared before. Some of my first intimate experiences as a young teen were actually with girls,” Winslet said. “I’d kissed a few girls, and I’d kissed a few boys, but I wasn’t particularly evolved in either direction.”
Related: Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan Star In Lesbian Drama
Her comments came in response to a question about how much of herself she brought to the role of Juliet, one half of the intensely bonded teenage pair at the center of Heavenly Creatures. Winslet starred opposite Melanie Lynskey.
“At that stage in my life, I certainly was curious, and I think there was something about the really intense connection that those two women had that I profoundly understood,” Winslet explained. “I was so immediately sucked into the vortex of that world they were in that obviously became horrendously damaging to both of them, and they had huge insecurities and vulnerabilities.”
Winslet also acknowledged the limits of her understanding at the time. She said she “couldn’t truly understand” the darker elements of the film when she was young, but she recognized the depth of attachment that can form when people are still figuring out who they are.
Related: ‘Pluribus’ Becomes Apple TV’s Most-Watched Show, With Lesbian Lead Carol At The Center
Heavenly Creatures was Winslet’s first film role, and she has said she had never even held a script before auditioning. The film marked a turning point not just for her career, but for Jackson’s as well, moving him away from splatter horror and into psychological drama. For Winslet, it opened the door to roles in Sense and Sensibility, Jude, and Hamlet, before global fame arrived with Titanic.
Winslet has never publicly come out as LGBTQ+, but she has repeatedly spoken out about the pressures LGBTQ+ actors face in an industry that still polices sexuality and marketability. Speaking to The Sunday Times in 2021, she said, “I cannot tell you the number of young actors I know — some well known, some starting out — who are terrified their sexuality will be revealed and that it will stand in the way of their being cast in straight roles,” adding that the situation is “f—– up.”
