For someone who became the world’s most famous woman aged just 22, when Titanic aired, perhaps it’s no surprise that Kate Winslet is already contemplating her 50th birthday next year. But, as has become customary for a Hollywood legend who’s more Cornwall than Chateau Marmont, she’s approaching it differently. ‘I’ve decided I don’t want any presents. Instead, I want to do 50 incredible things for 50,’ she tells Grazia, as we gather for dinner in a sleepy village on the Cornish coast to celebrate her latest campaign for Longines, the watchmaker for whom she has long been an ambassador. ‘But they have to be made up of acts of kindness, physical feats and probably something like trying foods I've never tried before. It almost makes me want to be on Instagram to document it,’ she muses, before adding, ‘But I won’t.’
Despite the pretender accounts set up by fans, Winslet has never been on social media – and is glad that her kids have followed her lead. ‘My children have never had social media. We’ve been very lucky. At the beginning, they would say – it was Facebook at the time – “All our friends' party invitations are on Facebook.” And I’d say, “You are a kind, interesting person and if they want you to come, they can phone you up.” And they did. And they still don’t have it,’ she recalls.
She feels so strongly about the issue that, in 2022, she teamed up with her daughter Mia to make I Am Ruth, an improvised drama about a mother struggling to cope with her daughter’s depressive spiral into an online world. It went on to win a BAFTA, with Winslet using her acceptance speech to call for action from the tech companies. ‘Please eradicate harmful content, we don't want it. We want our children back,’ she said to the audience. ‘We don't want to lie awake, terrified by our children's mental health. And to any young person who might be listening, who feels that they are trapped in an unhealthy world: please ask for help.’
Today, she says that she continues to be ‘overwhelmed’ by the reaction to I Am Ruth. ‘People still come up to me in the street and I can tell that it’s going to be about I Am Ruth,’ she says. ‘It happened here last week: a woman came up to me in a car park and sobbed and she didn’t even need to say it was about that. I just held her. It’s about making people feel understood.’
She has advice for parents struggling with how to stem the tide of smartphones and social media taking over childhood. ‘Get a group of parents from school together, tell them how you’re feeling, and you’ll probably find you won’t be the only one thinking it,’ she says. ‘I remember doing that with my kids and I said to the other parents, “Why don’t we all be the meanies together,” by not letting them have phones. Then there was power in numbers.’
But, Winslet believes, parents must also be cognisant about how they talk to their kids – and about themselves. ‘As a mother of girls, you have to tell them all the time that they are fabulous and beautiful because they are so inundated by negativity all the time,’ she says. ‘You have to tell them every single day. And you have to be very careful about how you speak about yourself. You can never say anything negative about yourself. You have to say, “I look fabulous today.” Mario Testino used to do that. He would say, “Today I’m looking faaabulous!”’
Winslet is determined to make sure her work is projecting a positive message, too. Her recent campaign for L’Oréal, where she discusses finding self-worth while taking off her make-up on screen, went viral. And she approached her new Longines campaign, filmed in some of her favourite spots along the Cornish coast, with the same attitude. ‘It was really important that it felt real; that it felt like me. It’s my own hair and make-up, clothes, my own dog,’ she says of Digger, the rambunctious retriever who’s seen bounding down the beach.
The cinematic shots of her cold-water swimming and walking over windswept cliffs while contemplating the passing of time, is, Winslet says, the closest any of us will have come to seeing the woman behind the Hollywood roles. ‘I’ve spent so many years giving interviews and really trying to be myself, but this is the first time that I really have actually been myself. Really and truly... It’s something that, in my acting world, I try not to be, because I’m pretending to be somebody else all the time, and so it was such a pleasure and a privilege to be told, “It’s OK, let’s embrace this narrative and make it feel like a secret,”’ she says of the campaign, which celebrates Longines’ new Mini Dolcevita line of watches, with double straps made from luxurious nappa leather that nod to the watchmaker’s equestrian heritage.
While Winslet isn’t telling the world all her Cornish secrets, she will admit that the restaurant in which she’s chosen to host the dinner is one of her favourites. So, as we sit down to eat at 2 Fore Street, a French-style bistro on Mousehole’s harbour with a view out to sea, I ask what’s inspired her newfound confidence to let the world see the real Kate Winslet. ‘The strange thing is that, 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, I would have been more protective of that narrative,’ she says. ‘But now I feel that we’ve all gone through so much together with Covid and MeToo, that that sort of filter that I had, which even though it seems like I never really had one, I probably did, but that filter I had of really wanting to speak truly to people, I can do that now and I can do that in my work and with Longines.’
Kate Winslet is the Ambassador of Elegance for Longines. The new Mini Dolcevita watches come with or without diamond settings and have six different colour leather straps to choose from.