Daily Times

Someone book Kate Winslet for a TED Talk, because her words will make you cheer. The Oscar-winning actress and ‘Titanic’ star continues to speak out against childhood bullying, using her own experience of being bullied in school to try to give hope to victims. Speaking in front of about 12,000 people, including kids, at the fourth annual WE Day UK event at the SSE Arena in Wembley, London Wednesday, Winslet recalled being fat-shamed and talked about pursuing her dream of acting despite being discouraged to do so.

“I had been bullied at school,” she said. “They called me Blubber. Teased me for wanting to act. Locked me in the cupboard. Laughed at me. I was even told that I ‘might be lucky with my acting, if I was happy to settle for the fat girl parts’,” she said. “I felt that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t look right and all because I didn’t fit into someone else’s idea of ‘perfect’. I didn’t have the perfect body.”

The actress, who had revealed her past “Blubber” nickname in interviews before, said she “had to choose to rise above it all”.

“I was always auditioning for the school plays,” she said. “I didn’t really get very good parts, mind you, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t care. I would often get cast as the crocodile, or the scarecrow, or the dark fairy, I was even a dancing frog once. But it didn’t matter. I still loved it. I loved acting. It didn’t matter how big or small the parts were. I wanted to be great and I was determined to keep learning. And then one day, I was cast as Rose in ‘Titanic’,” she said. “The most unlikely candidate, Kate from the sandwich shop in Reading, suddenly acting in one of the biggest movies ever made!”

Winslet encouraged the audience to “get out there” and be true to themselves.

“Get out there and go for it because your generation has the power to rock the world!” she said. “You can be from anywhere, and you can do anything,” she told the crowd. “Believe it.”