Kate Winslet calls out ‘belly rolls’ body shaming comment ahead of topless scenes in ‘Lee’ biopic

Oscar-award winning actress Kate Winslet has called out body shaming comments from a crew member on the set of the biopic Lee.

Winslet revealed recently that a crew member on the set of the film advised her to suck in her stomach to hide her “belly rolls” during one scene where she is topless with her friends, feeling comfortable in her body.

Winslet told Time: “You think I’m not aware you can see that? I just went ‘I’m all good’.”

Prior to filming Lee, Winslet told Harpers Bazaar UK that she made a “deliberate” choice to stop exercising before taking on the role: “It is my life on my face, and that matters. It wouldn’t occur to me to cover that up.”

She also wanted to be the “softest, physical version” of herself in the film.

Critics have labelled her as “brave” for going topless in Lee but she doesn’t agree.

“Brave is going to the front line. Brave is being a NHS nurse during Covid. It’s not flipping brave to go topless or have no makeup or no Botox…That’s just being a real person,” Winslet said on the How to Fail podcast with Elizabeth Day.

This is not the first time Winslet has faced body shaming comments during her career.

Winslet said she received “abusive” public scrutiny of her figure, particularly after gaining notoriety in James Cameron’s Titanic, released in 1997.

“The Nineties [were a] strange time where it was thought that women were all meant to be a certain size,” Winslet told Day.

“It was a really rough introduction into being famous and it put the fear of God in me. After Titanic, I made active choices to do the smallest things I could find while I was learning who I was.”

Winslet added that she struggled with an eating disorder after Titanic came out because of public body shaming, and regretted not calling out those comments sooner.

She also praised the body positivity movement that now gives people the chance to confront those comments in Hollywood.

Lee film reviews- what critics are saying about the new movie

In Lee, Winslet plays the renowned photojournalist Lee Miller, who began as a model before she was hired by Vogue to document World War II.

Winslet is starring alongside Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Noémie Merlant, Josh O’Connor, and Alexander Skarsgård.

The film will premiere in cinemas on September 27 and is being directed by Ellen Kuras.

Lee has received 66% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, 6.5 out of 10 on IMDB, and three stars from Empire Magazine.

Empire Magazine writes that Winslet is “formidable” as Miller but uses “tired storytelling devices” by telling the story of Miller through the “well-trodden trope of an interview decades in the future”.

Similarly, the Financial Times says that Winslet is a “gifted actor” who brings Miller to life but is not as impressed by the “busy script”.

Giving Lee four stars, it adds: “Too often, characters talk in gobs of historical detail, as if they had just read each other’s Wikipedia page. But kudos to Winslet for getting Lee made, and conjuring so vividly the one-off Miller was.”

The Wikipedia reference continues in The i Paper’s review, which states that Lee is “boring” and “shows a colourless facsimile of the tremendous woman Lee Miller clearly was” despite, once again, praising Winslet’s acting overall. The i Paper gave Lee two stars.