“If you’re going to look like this, you’ll have to settle for the fat-girl parts.” — a drama teacher to Kate Winslet when she was in her mid teens, according to Winslet’s account during a 60 Minutes essay that aired yesterday (12.1).

By “like this,” the drama teacher meant not slender or rail-thin, a physical state that all competitive actresses aspire to whether they want to admit it or not.

What the drama teacher also meant, I suspect, was that Winslet wasn’t so much “fat” as zaftig (curvy, fleshy, wide-hipped). During the filming of Titanic James Cameron allegedly referred to Winset as “Kate weighs-a-lot.” I’ve personally never said an unkind word to any woman’s face for the misdemeanor of being a bit hefty or bulky, but I’ve held critical thoughts about such qualities for nearly my whole life. Everyone has.

Catherine Breillat made a film about a French obese teen and called it Fat Girl. Was that a size-ist slur or a statement of fact?

Things have changed over the last 30-plus years, but women of size and bulk are still not generally regarded as being in the 8, 9 or 10 categories…be honest. Nobody wants to be so impolite or coarse to put such women down for this, and it’s certainly permissible if this or that guy finds “big girls” attractive…knock yourselves out.

It’s noteworthy that the 60 Minutes interviewer (Ayesha Siddiqi, who blends ardent feminism with standard obsequiousness) didn’t ask Winslet to explain or reiterate her own statement of self-condemnation for the crime of having worked with Woody Allen (Wonder Wheel) and Roman Polanski (Carnage).

Winslet: “It’s unbelievable to me now how those men were held in such high regard, so widely in the film industry and for as long as they were. It’s fucking disgraceful.” I’ll tell you what was disgraceful back in ’21 — knee-jerk #MeToo Stalinist sentiments from Johnny-come-lately, trying-to-curry- favor activist actresses.

HE’s Lee review, posted on 8.27.24:

After watching Lee last night, I can at least say that I’m much more familiar with the life and times of Lee Miller, and for that I’m grateful. I apologize for my previous ignorance.

For Lee — shot in late ’22, premiered in Toronto 12 months ago, opening on 9.13.24 — is a reasonably sturdy, realistic and believable portrait of a gutsy feminist firebrand who went for the gusto, and under fire at that.

Born in ’07, Miller died 37 years at age 70.

The Lee screenplay was written by Liz Hannah, John Collee and Marion Hume, and is adapted from Antony Penrose‘s “The Lives of Lee Miller” (’85).

Winslet produced and even personally coughed up for two weeks of expenses during filming.

A 1920s fashion model turned Parisian expat, Man Ray-influenced photographer and renowned WWII Vogue photojournalist (London Blitz, 1944 Paris liberation, horrors of Buchenwald and Dachau), Miller was in her late 30s when her war experiences began. Winslet was in her late 40s when filming started, but she and the 1940s-era Miller clearly resemble each other. Past their foxy prime (weathered, not slender) but with good bones and take-no-shit demeanors.

The film tells us that in real life Miller never rolled over for anyone — bristling with moxie, defiance, bravery. Sipped from a metal flask, smoked like a chimney.

Winslet and Alexander Sjarsgard, who plays her lover Roland Penrose, are only a year apart in age, although he’s in better shape.

Winslet has told journalists that she’s accepting of the fact that she’s become something of a big girl (not fat but fleshy, ample), but she’s also made sure that Lee viewers will understand that her bodacious ta-tas are just as big and bountiful as ever. Lee features three boob-flashing scenes, and one in particular definitely struck me as erotic — a moment when Penrose smears green body paint all over her upper torso.

Lee Miller was tough and gutsy and liked to fuck and smoke and hang out with the swells, and she took no shit or derision from sexist males. She was tough, scrappy, blunt.

Her experiences in war-torn France are tonally grim and draining but enveloping all the same. Kuras makes certain that we understand that war is hell, horror, slaughter. Stinking dead bodies on freight cars…good God. There’s no mistaking that Lee, in a very primal way, was affected by all this carnage. You can feel it in her sad, shaken, traumatized eyes.

I’m not a fan of Winslet’s crude, twangy American accent, but it doesn’t get in the way. Lee is a militantly feminist film. It’s basically saying that many (most?) men back then were smug, overbearing, entitled dicks. Hell, they still are! Men of the world, let’s all get together on a worldwide Zoom call and slit our throats!

Lee boasts a first-rate supporting cast — Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Skarsgard, Andy Samberg, Noémie Merlant, Josh O’Connor.

“Not everyone can believe this. Surely they can see what he is.” — from a Lee scene in which Winslet is watching newsreel footage of Adolf Hitler but is also, obviously, referring to Donald Trump.

Please check out the Lee Miller archives.