Kate Winslet Wishes She Had Intimacy Coordinators When Younger: 'Had to Stand Up for Myself'

Even her most famous role, that of young Rose in Titanic, featured a prominent scene where she was disrobed. Was that scene comfortable for the young actress to film? The 1997 blockbuster was made two decades before intimacy coordinators became a facet of film sets.

Looking back, the 48-year-old Oscar winner says she would have loved to have had them as part of her filmmaking experience when she was younger. "I would have benefited from an intimacy coordinator every single time I had to do a love scene or be partially naked or even a kissing scene," she told The New York Times.

As a young woman on a film set where more often than not you were in a far more vulnerable state of undress than your male co-stars, Winslet said, "It would have been nice to have had someone in my corner, because I always had to stand up for myself."

The problem was that as a young actress, she didn't have the skills or the confidence, perhaps, to advocate for herself as successfully as she might today. In fact, she admitted she didn't have the courage for certain critiques she might have liked to make then.

"I don't like that camera angle. I don't want to stand here full-frontal nude. I don't want this many people in the room. I want my dressing gown to be closer," she said. "Just little things like that."

She said that as a young performer, there's so much concern about "p--sing people off or coming across as rude or pathetic," that they're more likely to just stay quiet. "Learning to have a voice for oneself in those environments was very, very hard," she said.

The proliferation and expansions of intimacy coordinators on film and television productions was a direct result of the #MeToo movement in 2017. That seismic shift not only removed many predators from positions of power in the entertainment industry, but it helped ensure safeguards for all performers.

One of those safety measures came in the form of intimacy coordinators, who are there to ensure the safety and comfort of all actors and actresses engaged in intimate scenes. They're often involved with the planning as well as the actual filming.

A new policy of discretion for the profession was recently adopted after an intimacy coordinator inadvertently made headlines. In response to negative public reactions to a sex scene between Jenna Ortega, 21, and Martin Freeman, 52, due to their age difference, the intimacy coordinator for Miller's Girl publicly assured everyone that Ortega was good.

Speaking to The Daily Mail about the film, which saw Ortega playing an 18-year-old college student's relationship with her older teacher, intimacy coordinator Kristina Arjona said that there were many people involved making sure that Ortega was comfortable at all points in the process.

"I'm hyper aware of both of my talent and making sure that we're consistently checking in and that at no point are any of their boundaries being surpassed," Arjona said. Neither Ortega nor Freeman has spoken out about the matter.

In response to her interview, the actors' union SAG-AFTRA released new guidelines for intimacy coordinators. The new guideline makes it clear that any "public release of details about an actor's scene work or confidences entrusted to the intimacy coordinator without the performer's consent is unacceptable." Repercussions could include the coordinator being removed from SAG-AFTRA's registry.