Kate Winslet Bares Her Soul - And Body
May 15, 1996

CANNES -- Kate Winslet, the Oscar-nominated younger sister to Emma Thompson in Sense And Sensibility, is growing up quickly.

The 20-year-old English actress is causing a sensation at Cannes with her performance in Jude, an adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel Jude The Obscure.

Winslet, a radiant beauty, plays Sue Brideshead, Jude's lifelong obsessive love. She is seen in a dramatic sexual encounter with co-star Christopher Eccleston in which she offers full frontal nudity to the camera.

Getting naked wasn't easy, but it was necessary, Winslet says in an interview, where Jude has been screened.

"I mean it was tough to do it. I never had any problem that the scene was in the script because it was such a turning point for Sue and it was absolutely crucial it was there.

"The thing that was hard about it was that I had to get my 'kit' off. It would be like saying to you: 'Strip off here now!'

"No one was bullying me into it. I was willing to do it and I just thought, well, get on with it girl! Once I had done it once, I was fine.

"Those scenes, I now know, are so technical, more technical that any other scenes in the film." And never sensual for the participants. "No, they're not, because you're just not thinking about that at all. You're really thinking about making sure you don't mask Chris's face, making sure you lean a little more to the left because, otherwise, you're going to see his bits and pieces. It's all that sort of stuff, so you really do forget that you're wearing nothing."

Winslet also goes nude, more discreetly, as Ophelia to director-star Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, which has just wrapped. "It was no easier," she says. It was necessary to show "this relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet is a sexual relationship. We immediately realize Ophelia is a woman, not just a girl."

No word on whether Winslet will bare all again in her next movie, Titantic, the mega-million dollar Hollywood flick from Terminator creator James Cameron. But it is a love story set on the ill-fated ship. It shoots this summer.

Source: The Toronto Sun

Courtesy of now closed Winsome World of Winslet