Kate Winslet has made a rare and candid revelation about her early sexual experiences, saying she explored intimacy with both girls and boys during her teenage years.
Speaking on Wednesday’s episode of the Team Deakins podcast, the Oscar-winning actress shared what she described as “something I’ve never shared before.” Winslet said that as a teenager, she was curious and open while discovering her identity.
“At that stage in my life, I certainly was curious,” she said, adding that she had kissed “a few girls” and “a few boys” during her first intimate experiences. However, she clarified that she was not “particularly evolved in either direction” at the time.
Winslet explained that these early experiences helped her deeply connect with her role in the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, which starred her alongside Melanie Lynskey. The movie tells the story of two teenage girls whose intense and obsessive bond ultimately turns destructive.
“There was something about the really intense connection that those two women had,” Winslet said of the film. “I was so immediately sucked into the vortex of that world they were in, which obviously became horrendously damaging to both of them.”
The Titanic star added that the characters’ deep insecurities and vulnerabilities felt familiar on an emotional level, giving her a “profound” understanding of the story she was telling on screen.
Winslet’s personal life has often been kept private. Her first public relationship began when she was 15, dating actor Stephen Tredre, who was 12 years older. The relationship lasted from 1991 until 1995.
In 1998, she married filmmaker Jim Threapleton, with whom she shares a daughter, Mia, now 25. The couple divorced in 2001. Two years later, Winslet married director Sam Mendes, and they welcomed a son, Joe, now 22, before separating in 2010.
Winslet married for a third time in 2012 to Edward Abel Smith. The couple remain together and share a 12-year-old son, Bear.
In a past interview with WSJ. Magazine in 2015, Winslet defended her decision to keep her love life largely out of the public eye.
“No one really knows what has happened in my life,” she said at the time. “No one really knows why my first marriage didn’t last; no one knows why my second didn’t.”
She added that while her personal journey had not been easy, it was simply the life she had been given. “Those are the cards that life dealt me,” Winslet said.
