Kate Winslet attends the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards
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Kate Winslet has spoken out about developing an eating disorder when she was younger due to constant scrutiny of her body.
The Oscar-winning Titanic actress addressed the issue as she hit out at the growing trend in Hollywood of using the diabetes drug Ozempic to lose weight.
Ozempic is a once-a-week injectable prescription medicine, designed to be used alongside diet and exercise, to improve blood sugar levels and manage the risk of heart attacks and stroke.
Its active ingredient, semaglutide, controls insulin secretion from the pancreas but has also been found to suppress appetite receptors in the brain.
“I actually don’t know what Ozempic is,” Winslet told the New York Times.
“All I know is that it’s some pill that people are taking or something like that.”
After the drug was explained to the British actress, she remarked, “Oh, my God. This sounds terrible. Let’s eat some more things!”
Winslet then opened up about her own struggles with weight following her starring role in the 1997 movie Titanic, later developing an eating disorder.
“I never told anyone about it,” she said.
“Because guess what — people in the world around you go: ‘Hey, you look great! You lost weight!’
“So even the compliment about looking good is connected to weight.
“And that is one thing I will not let people talk about. If they do, I pull them up straight away.”
Winslet referred to a “joke” by the late comedian Joan Rivers, who suggested that the actress’ weight was the reason the Titanic sank.
The 48-year-old then looked back at red carpet footage from the Oscars, “sadly” remarking, “Look how thin I was”.
The actress has previously spoken out about being “addicted to losing weight” as a teenager, sharing that she had once used laxatives for three months.
She first opened up in 2007 about her struggle, sharing that it began when she was aged 15 and weighed 89kg (14 stone).
“I was uncomfortable and self-conscious. I knew I wanted to be an actress and was big,” she told Daily Mail at the time.
“Over a year, I sensibly got down to 10 stone (63kg).
“Then I became addicted to losing weight and went too far.
“I was never anorexic or bulimic. I went through a three-month experimental laxative time which was absolutely awful.
“Luckily I was strong enough to be able to say to myself: ‘What are you doing? You are just really hungry.’
“The whole weight thing drives me crazy.
“This stuff is so important to me because I have been there and know what a vicious cycle it is.”
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