During a recent episode of the “Team Deakins” podcast, Kate Winslet discussed her debut in Peter Jackson’s 1994 drama-thriller “Heavenly Creatures,” which follows the Oscar winner and Melanie Lynskey as two teens who share a dangerously obsessive friendship. When asked how much of herself she brought to the role of Juliet, Winslet shared that her “first intimate experiences” as a teenager were “with girls,” which helped her understand the “really intense connection” at the heart of the film.
“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 added, “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 later explained that while she “couldn’t truly understand” the darker elements of the film, she connected with the deep personal connections someone can form when they are young and “vulnerable.”
“Heavenly Creatures” was Winslet’s breakout role. She told “Team Deakins” that she “never held a film script” before auditioning for the film. It was also Jackson’s first foray into drama. Before helming “Heavenly Creatures,” his directing credits included horror films like “Bad Taste” and “Dead Alive,” and the dark comedy “Meet the Feebles.”
In the years after “Heavenly Creatures,” Winslet starred in “Sense and Sensibility,” “Jude” and “Hamlet” before landing “Titanic” in 1997.
