Kate Winslet tells why she left Hollywood after 'Titanic'

What does an actor do after starring in the most-expensive and highest-grossing movie of all time? Sure, some may call Disney and demand $20 million to star in the next Michael Bay movie. But after ”Titanic” Kate Winslet dashed off to Morocco to star in the low-budget $3 million ”Hideous Kinky” (which opens today in New York and L.A., and nationally on April 23). ”After ‘Titanic’ I did want to do something that was smaller and completely different,” Winslet tells EW Online. ”It was very important to me to let people know that I wasn’t just going to ride on the crest of the wave forever and just do lots and lots of Hollywood movies. And I didn’t want any of my fellow Brits to go, ‘Oh, thanks Kate Winslet for just bypassing all the British movies.”’

Winslet, 23, didn’t merely have her fellow Brit-izens’ feelings in mind when she accepted the ”Kinky” role of the eccentric-bordering-on-irresponsible expatriate mother who drags her young children on adventures around Morocco: She also had selfish motivations. She committed to the film just prior to the release of ”Titanic” when she was getting a sinking feeling about the impending publicity. ”I really wanted to ground myself because I knew things were going to go bananas when ‘Titanic’ was released,” she says. ”People said, ‘You know, this is really going to change your life.’ And I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want my life to change. I like me, and I like the way things are.’ I knew doing ‘Hideous Kinky’ would be grounding before all the madness of ‘Titanic’ happened.”