Kate Winslet rose to stardom in Hollywood thanks to Titanic, but if there is one film that put her in the eye of the industry and launched her career, it was Heavenly Creatures, the dreamlike and passionate film by Peter Jackson that she starred in alongside Melanie Lynskey. It’s hard to forget the feeling this teenage romance and the bond between its two leads exuded. However, as warm as the emotions that emanated from this story were and as good a relationship was forged between the two actresses, the passage of time, coupled with Winslet’s professional growth, has made their friendship history turn to coldness and estrangement.
This is what Melanie Lynskey has told in an interview with the podcast Happy Sad Confused. In the middle of the promotion of the second season of Yellowjackets, the Showtime series where she plays one of its protagonists alongside Christina Ricci or Juliette Lewis, she has had time to remember her friendship with Winslet, about which until now she had always highlighted the good relationship that was forged after Heavenly Creatures.
For example, in 2012, in an interview with Time, she did not hesitate to highlight how after the film they contacted each other day in and day out by all kinds of means. “We wrote letters to each other and talked on the phone all the time. We were in constant contact for so long,” she said. But now the situation is very different.
According to Lynskey, he has had no contact with Kate Winslet for years, and not precisely because their friendship had a bad outcome, but because the busy schedule of his partner after the success of Titanic led to the cooling of their relationship. “When I lost touch with Kate it was more heartbreaking than some breakups I’ve had,” she told the Happy Sad Confused podcast, “It was very painful and it wasn’t like anything happened between us, she just became a gigantic international movie star, didn’t have a lot of time and then suddenly she was in L.A. and didn’t have an opening.”
It’s not something she reproaches her partner in Heavenly Creatures for, since she considers it something normal that “happens in relationships” and she even says that something similar happened to her with another actor. Even so, it is impossible for her not to feel it as something “very painful”.
In the end, in an industry like the film industry, we are talking about a profession where actresses and actors spend months together, both in filming and in the intense promotional tours, so it is difficult not to forge friendships as strong as the one built by Winslet and Lynskey when they were so young. However, this job also has its flip side, because between so many shoots, events and commitments in the end it is very difficult to keep working on a relationship, especially when you are at the top of Hollywood.
In the case of Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey, they have not seen each other for more than a decade, since they coincided in the premiere of Sam Mendes’ The Best Place in the World. Lynskey was one of the actresses in the film, while Winslet came to accompany the director, her partner at the time. Since then they have remained estranged, although Lynskey continues to rave about her partner and considers her “a great inspiration,” especially for how she dealt with the many criticisms of her body in her leap to stardom.
I know she’s a very, very confident person, but we’re all sensitive and she’s very sensitive. And the way they dissected and talked about her? I remember being very angry at the time,” she continued. “Kate Winslet is making movies and you can witness her talent and her performances. She’s a once-in-a-generation actress – just focus on that!”. It really infuriated me and I was always amazed at how she handled all of that with grace. She was always really impressive,” he concluded.
Thus, it is demonstrated that fame comes with an inevitable coldness from which it is difficult to flee, and it is not a question of two actresses who are very close because of a movie not wanting to continue seeing each other, talking or keeping in touch, but rather that the obligations of an industry like Hollywood leave little room to continue working relationships and living life normally. And it is even sad to read statements like Melanie Lynskey’s.