Kate Winslet opens up about the devastating impact that playing troubled characters had on her mental health - revealing she once 'went mad and needed professional help to recover'

Kate Winslet has opened up about the devastating impact that playing troubled characters has had on her mental health, revealing she once 'went mad' and needed professional help to recover.

The Oscar winner, 50, detailed the real-life toll of immersing herself in emotionally demanding roles, confessing there was one occasion recently when she needed 'proper support' to separate herself from a character.

'There's this thing that happens as an actor, and it sounds very self indulgent so I very rarely say it,' Kate said this week on the Lessons from Our Mothers podcast.

'But when you play a really difficult part - I think of Mare of Easttown, for example, which flattened me, my god - you do have to kind of come out the other side.'

She added: 'I call it re-entry. Re-entry into your own life, going back into your friendships, reintegrating into the rhythm of family again. Exiting a family, leaving people behind, letting a character go.

'It takes a while, actually, to unpick a character from your system, especially if you have played them for a long time, which, with television, you really do.'

The Titanic star pointed to her performance in Mare of Easttown as the role that pushed her to breaking point.

The HBO drama, which aired in 2021, saw Kate portray a small-town Pennsylvania detective investigating a local murder whilst dealing with profound personal trauma, including divorce and the suicide of her son.

'It was meant to be a six month shoot,' she explained. 

'Covid happened after the five months that we had been shooting, and everything got pushed, and when we came back, our five remaining weeks turned into 10.

'By the end of the whole thing, I'd been playing that character for over a year. And I really honestly went a bit mad. It was quite weird.'

She continued: 'It's the only time in my life that I actually had to get some proper help, to come back to myself.

'It sounds completely insane, and even as I say it, I feel quite uncomfortable saying it, because I'm aware of how bonkers and indulgent that can sound.'

Kate's candid confession comes as her son Joe, 21, follows in her footsteps into the industry.

She said Joe - whose father is her ex-husband, James Bond director Sam Mendes - recently finished filming the new Apple TV+ series Cape Fear in Atlanta where he played what his mother described as 'an unbelievably disturbing role.'

Drawing on her own traumatic experience, she added that she has been able to offer her son the support she wishes she'd had early in her career.

'He's a few months out the other side of that, and he's still in the experience of the re-entry,' she said. 

'I'm able to actively support my son in this moment in his life, when actually, the mothering does kick in again on a very cellular level.

'Good meals, good walk, let's get in the sea. Don't need to talk today? That's fine. Want to stay in bed today? Absolutely fine. You don't need to do anything. Doesn't matter. Do nothing and be okay with it.'

Kate, who is married to Sir Richard Branson's businessman nephew Edward Abel Smith, also has daughter Mia, 25 - an actress - with first husband Jim Threapleton, and son Bear, 12, with Edward.

Asked on the podcast if she ever gives her children advice when it comes to the acting industry, Kate replied: 'I never give an opinion unless I'm asked for one.

'And when it comes to acting, actually, they don't ask me for anything. They just get on and do it themselves. And I love the fact that they do that because that's exactly what I did.

'And it's a very private process - everyone's process, as actors, is really, really different, and I just totally leave them to it.'

Kate attracted criticism last month over remarks about nepo babies, saying she disliked the term - used to describe the children of celebrities who follow in their famous parents' footsteps - and branded it 'silly'.

Speaking to the BBC ahead of the release of her directorial debut Goodbye June, for which her son Joe wrote the screenplay, she claimed that her children 'are not getting a leg up' in their careers.