Avatar actress Kate Winslet has been making headlines after breaking Tom Cruise’s record that he made while filming Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation for holding his breath for six minutes.
During the shoot of her new movie, Avatar: The Way of Water, Kate recorded an underwater scene where she held her breath for seven minutes and fifteen seconds.
After the filming, Winslet spoke about her stunt and said she thought she had died underwater after holding her breath for that long.
Speaking to Total Film Magazine, the 47-year-old revealed that when she resurfaced after recording the scene, she first asked if she was alive.
“I have the video of me surfacing saying, ‘Am I dead, have I died?'” she said. “Straight away, I wanted to know my time. And I couldn’t believe it. The next thing I say is, ‘We need to radio set. I wanted Jim to know right away.”
The Titanic alum added that it was not in the instructions given by director James Cameron to hold her breath for this long. But she thought of challenging herself and took it as an opportunity to break her previous record. Surprisingly, she somehow managed to break Cruise’s 2015 MI record.
“It’s just that the opportunity to set a record presented itself. I wanted to break my own record, which was already six minutes and 14 seconds. And I was like, ‘Come on!’ So I smashed my own record by a minute.”
Speaking to Variety, the actress said it was amazing to film the scenes in massive water tanks.
“I absolutely loved it. When you’re working with real experts who know how to keep you safe and know how to teach you to maximize your fullest potential in a situation like that one and will look after you, it was an amazing experience. It’s not something you can just try at home by yourself.”
Previously, in October 2022, Avatar’s director, James Cameron called Winslet ‘a demon for prep’ during his interview with The New York Times.
“She latched onto the free diving as something that she could build her character around,” he told the outlet.
“Kate’s character is someone who grew up underwater as an ocean-adapted Na’vi — they’re so physically different from the forest Na’vi, that we’d almost classify them as a subspecies,” he added. “So she had to be utterly calm underwater, and it turned out that she was a natural.”
In her recent interview with Total Film, the award-winning actress said that over half of her life has passed since she first worked with Cameron for her blockbuster movie, Titanic.
“He’s just a really different person. Hopefully, we both are. A huge chunk of time has gone by – over half my lifetime. You know, people say it was 25 years since Titanic. It’s not! It’s 27 years for us, you know, I turned 21 on that film, I’m 47.”
She added, “I think we were both able to bring different creative things into this experience. And it was really lovely working with him again.”
Avatar’s sequel is all set to hit the movie theatres on December 16, 2022.
Share Your Thoughts:
What are your thoughts about Kate Winslet record-breaking performance in the new Avatar film? Are you excited to watch the movie? Let us know in the comment section.
Sources: Total Film Magazine – Variety – The New York Times
