Kate Winslet admits that post-Titanic fame was 'horrible': 'My life was quite unpleasant'

Kate Winslet has finally made her peace with fame — but it took a few years to get there.

In a new interview with Porter Magazine, Winslet revealed that her post-Titanic life was more frustrating than celebratory. After starring in the iconic 1997 disaster film, which broke box office records and launched her and Leonardo DiCaprio into mega-fame, Winslet admits that life in the spotlight became frustrating.

“I felt like I had to look a certain way, or be a certain thing,” she told the outlet. “And because media intrusion was so significant at that time, my life was quite unpleasant.”

After a pause, she continued, “Journalists would always say, ‘After Titanic, you could have done anything and yet you chose to do these small things’… and I was like, ‘Yeah, you bet your f---in’ life I did! Because, guess what, being famous was horrible.’”

Winslet, now 48, was only 22 when James Cameron’s romantic tragedy first hit theaters, becoming a worldwide sensation. Titanic not only hit No. 1 in its opening weekend, but stayed there for a whopping 15 weeks, eventually earning the title of the highest-grossing film of all time — which held for more than a decade, before being dethroned by Cameron’s Avatar.

“I was grateful, of course. I was in my early 20s, and I was able to get a flat,” Winslet said. “But I didn’t want to be followed literally feeding the ducks.”

As for her feelings on fame two decades later, Winslet called it a "ridiculous word," but added, "I wear it really lightly. It’s not a burden, any of it. [Titanic] continues to bring people huge amounts of joy."

That being said, she takes care to stay under the radar whenever water vessels are involved: "The only time I am like, ‘Oh god, hide’, is if we are on a boat somewhere.”

This isn’t the first time Winslet has opened up about her post-fame struggles. Back in 1999, she spoke to EW about her decision to star in Hideous Kinky, the low-budget biopic about British novelist Esther Freud that she used to “ground” herself.

“After Titanic I did want to do something that was smaller and completely different,” she explained. “It was very important to me to let people know that I wasn’t just going to ride on the crest of the wave forever and just do lots and lots of Hollywood movies. And I didn’t want any of my fellow Brits to go, ‘Oh, thanks Kate Winslet for just bypassing all the British movies.’”

She added, “I really wanted to ground myself because I knew things were going to go bananas when Titanic was released.”

Well, she certainly wasn't wrong.

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