Shania Russell is a news writer at Entertainment Weekly, with five years of experience. Her work has previously appeared in SlashFilm and Paste Magazine.
Titanic remains one of Kate Winslet's most celebrated films -- but it also marked the start of a tumultuous period in her life.
Her role as Rose DeWitt Bukater, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack Dawson, launched Winslet into stardom, forcing her to quickly adjust to life in the public eye.
"It was horrific," Winslet, 50, told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in a Dec. 21 interview. "There were people tapping my phone. They were just everywhere. And I was just on my own. I was terrified to go to sleep."
Winslet said she was particularly disturbed by the lengths that people went to when invading her privacy, which included searching through her trash cans to "try and figure out what diet I was on or wasn't on."
She added that in the aftermath of Titanic's release and immense popularity, she began seeing her face on the cover of newspapers and magazines, often accompanied by "awful, terrible, actually abusive names."
Winslet was just 22 when James Cameron's romantic tragedy arrived in theaters, instantly becoming a worldwide sensation. After opening to No. 1 on Dec. 19, 1997, the film remained at the top for a whopping 15 weeks. While she spoke highly of her experience making the movie and was grateful for its success, Winslet noted that her world was "totally turned upside down" once it hit theaters. As fervor for the film grew, she and DiCaprio became objects of tabloid fascination, with paparazzi constantly at their heels.
"I wasn't ready for that world," she admitted.
Winslet said the only way to cope was "a good meal, a shared conversation, a nice cup of coffee, a bit of Radiohead and a good poo." She added, "Life's all the better for those things."
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Elsewhere in the conversation, Winslet noted that the intrusion intensified again, a decade later, when she divorced her second husband, director Sam Mendes in 2010.
"I was being followed by paparazzi in New York City with my two small kids, who wanted to, of course, know the reason why Sam and I had split up," she shared.
How did she cope that time around? "You just keep your mouth closed, you put your head down, and you keep walking," she said. "And you try and put your hands over your children's ears. You lean on your friends, you just keep going."
Winslet credited her friends for lending their support, shouting out a neighboring couple who would leave her a "bowl of steaming pasta and a little glass of red wine" on the garden wall between their homes.
Over the years, Winslet has not shied away from unpacking the dark side of her success, from the general media intrusions to the frustration of being body-shamed by tabloids. Last year, during a visit to 60 Minutes, Winslet reacted to old footage of commentators discussing her dress size, voicing her lasting disgust for the way she was treated.
"It was absolutely appalling," she said. "What kind of a person must they be to do something like that to a young actress who's just trying to figure it out?"
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