Kate Winslet lived through an extraordinary career from Titanic to The Reader to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Recently, she revealed something deeply personal about where it all began and how her teenage years shaped her understanding of her very first film.
During a podcast with Team Deakins, Kate Winslet discussed Peter Jackson’s 1994 film Heavenly Creatures. She revealed how her first intimate experience helped her connect with the story’s emotional core.
“I’ll share something I’ve never shared before. Some of my first intimate experiences as a young teen were actually with girls. I’d kissed a few girls, and I’d kissed a few boys, but I wasn’t particularly evolved in either direction.”
She went ahead to explain how these influential moments gave her an insight into the film’s core relationship.
“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. 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,” she said.
Heavenly Creatures is based on the true story of Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker – two teenage girls whose intense friendship spiraled into darkness, ultimately leading them to murder Parker’s mother. The film marks the debut of both Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey.
