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Kate Winslet isn’t apologizing for ‘truly looking like a hot mess’ at 47
Kate Winslet is embracing the natural look in her 40s.
The “Mare of Easttown” star, 47, opened up about acting, motherhood and unrealistic beauty standards on the BBC “Woman’s Hour” podcast this week — and she isn’t going to apologize for “looking like a hot mess.”
When discussing the criticism she received for her appearance in “Mare” ahead of her new UK drama, “I Am Ruth,” the actress said she was tired of the double standards in Hollywood.
“You’d never make that much fuss or that much noise about a male actor’s appearance, would you now?” Winslet told the podcast. “No, you flipping wouldn’t.”
And while viewers criticized the “Titanic” actress for looking like she wasn’t wearing any makeup while filming the HBO crime drama, Winslet said this only made her want to take it “one step further” for her next project.
“I absolutely had makeup on [while playing Mare] and so when I came to do ‘I Am Ruth,’ which was the next thing I filmed after ‘Mare of Easttown,’ I thought: ‘Well, I’ve only got one option here and that’s to go one step further and really actually not wear any make-up and just scrape my hair back into a crappy old ponytail like I do every day of my life anyway,” she said.
Elaborating about her charity work — the Oscar winner recently donated £17,000 ($20,800) to a struggling family she saw highlighted in a BBC Scotland documentary — Winslet said she felt “a shift” in her forties away from worrying about things like appearance.
“I care passionately about highlighting issues that need to be talked about that perhaps people find hard to talk about,” she explained. “And not shying away from truly looking like a hot mess a lot of the time. I mean, who puts on makeup while they’re doing the school run? I don’t.”
The star — who re-wore a dress she’s had in her closet for 7 years to the “Avatar: The Way of Water” premiere on Tuesday — admitted that at 47, “there are bits that don’t do what you want them to do anymore.”
However, she takes it all in stride. “There’s something kind of fab about going: ‘Oh well, that’s just the way it is, isn’t it?’” she said.
However, Winslet urged women in their forties not to feel like “this is the beginning of the decline.”
“We become more woman, more powerful, more sexy,” she concluded. “I think it’s amazing. Let’s go girls, let’s just be in our power. Why not? Life’s too flipping short.”
