Kate Winslet has revealed that she and Saoirse Ronan choreographed their own sex scenes in their new lesbian film Ammonite.
And the Titanic star said: “I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene. And I felt by far the least self-conscious.”
The English Oscar-winner said director Francis Lee was nervous about shooting the intimate parts of their 19th Century love story so the two actresses took over.
“Saoirse and I choreographed the scene ourselves,” Winslet, 44, explains of the most explicit moments.
“It’s definitely not like eating a sandwich. I just think Saoirse and I, we just felt really safe.
“Francis was naturally very nervous. And I just said to him, ‘Listen, let us work it out.’
“And we did. ‘We’ll start here. We’ll do this with the kissing, boobs, you go down there, then you do this, then you climb up here.’
“I mean, we marked out the beats of the scene so that we were anchored in something that just supported the narrative.
“I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene on Ammonite. And I felt by far the least self-conscious.”
The two actresses only knew each casually before the shoot but the Irish star told The Hollywood Reporter that Winslet was extremely organised.
“Her performances are incredibly human. Obviously, she’s incredibly skilled, but she’s also someone you always feel you can identify with,” said the 26-year-old Carlow star.
“I think that says a lot about the kind of person she is. It’s sort of in [her] bones.”
The movie, which will make its world premiere on September 11 at the Toronto Film Festival, follows the 1840s romance between renowned English fossil-hunter Mary Anning (Winslet) and a timid married woman (Ronan) who she agrees to look after to help her out of her “melancholia.”
They soon create a strong bond while searching for fossils along the shoreline and eventually fall in love.
Titanic star Winslet – who won an Oscar for The Reader and was nominated for six other movies – said she was determined not to lose weight for the part.
“I’m nearly 45, and Saoirse is almost half my age. And to have an opportunity to be my real 40-something self, post-children, you know?
“Women aren’t really having the courage to do that. I was just excited to say, ‘This is what it is, peeps. This is how I am now.’
“And it’s very much not the body I had 20 years ago. And I also worked on maintaining that sort of heftiness to Mary.
“There is a grit to her, there’s a weight to her. I changed up my exercise a little bit. I made sure that I didn’t lose weight — which I do a lot, actually, on films.
“I hate to talk about weight, but I only say it in the context of, it was a conscious effort on my part to really make sure that I didn’t shrink or change myself for the sake of being naked. I did the opposite.”
Winslet is being tipped for an eighth Oscar nod while Ronan could well pick up her fifth following nominations for Atonement, Brooklyn, Lady Bird and Little Women.
Director Lee has already claimed he would do anything to work with the two stars again.
“The acting is phenomenal — Kate and Saoirse are both doing something very different from what they’ve done before, in such a glorious way,” he said.
“I would kill to work with them again. We had such a great time and formed a strong bond that has continued after the filming.”
