Kate Winslet says Heavenly Creatures crewmember joked ‘it’s hard-d***s day’ when filming her nude scene

Actor said she doesn’t know ‘a single girl who hasn’t experienced some level of harassment’

Kate Winslet has recalled an incident of sexual harassment on the set of the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures.

Winslet starred in Peter Jackson’s psychological thriller alongside Melanie Lynskey. It was both of their feature film debuts and they played two teenagers whose relationship culminates in the murder of one of their mothers.

Speaking in a new interview with Vanity Fair, Winslet said: “When I did an intimate scene on Heavenly Creatures, they were a lovely crew of people and they were so kind to myself and Melanie [Lynskey], and we never felt vulnerable, we never felt exposed.  

“But one of the camera boys – as we're lining up a shot, and we're both in our little undies, naked from the waist up – I heard him as an aside say to someone else, “Well, I guess it's hard-d***s day, boys.”

She said her reaction at the time, as a 19-year-old, was: “Well, that wasn’t very nice, but we’d better not say anything.” Winslet said she “must have buried it” until now because she had forgotten.

“When you’re younger, you do this nonsense thing of just thinking, ‘That’s what men say.’ And they do it sometimes like they’re breathing,” she said. “I don’t know a single girl, actually, who hasn’t experienced some level of harassment on that level. Even if they’re just words, they’re so powerful. It’s like bullying.”

Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet in 'Heavenly Creatures' (Rex Features)

The actor was keen to emphasise that, in spite of that incident, Heavenly Creatures was her “most treasured film experience”.

In the same interview, Winslet also expressed regret over working with Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. “What the f*** was I doing?” she said, adding that it is “f***ing disgraceful” that the two men were held in such high regard in the film industry despite Polanski’s conviction for rape and the sexual abuse allegations made against Allen, which he denies.

Winslet next stars in the period romance Ammonite, about the life of British palaeontologist Mary Anning (Winslet), alongside Saoirse Ronan.