Kate Winslet talked about her debut in Peter Jackson’s 1994 drama-thriller “Heavenly Creatures” during a recent episode of the “Team Deakins” podcast. The film centers on two teenagers who have a potentially compulsive friendship. Winslet revealed that her “first intimate experiences” as a teenager were “with girls,” which helped her comprehend the “really intense connection” at the center of the movie.
“I’ll share something I’ve never shared before. Some of my first intimate experiences as a young teen were actually with girls,” Winslet said. “I’d kissed a few girls, and I’d kissed a few boys, but I wasn’t particularly evolved in either direction.”
She continued, “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.”
Winslet subsequently clarified that although she “couldn’t truly understand” the film’s darker aspects, she did relate to the strong emotional bonds that young people might develop when they are “vulnerable.”
Winslet’s breakthrough performance was in “Heavenly Creatures.” She admitted to “Team Deakins” that before trying out for the movie, she “never held a film script.”
