Actors are known for getting properly stuck into the role, if that means dancing with death, then so be it, it’s all for the cause. Kate Winslet is the latest name to admit she came close to death while filming Avatar: The Way of Water.
It was during an interview with Total Film Magazine that Kate Winslet admitted to the scare while filming one of the underwater scenes where she held her breath for a very impressive seven minutes and 15 seconds. Winslet explained, “I have the video of me surfacing saying, ‘Am I dead, have I died.’ Straight away I wanted to know my time. And I couldn’t believe it.” How she thought she was dead, we’re not too sure, but we’ll let her have this one.
Winslet being able to hold her breath for this long wasn’t a necessity either, James Cameron didn’t insist on it, but the actor saw this as an opportunity to break her previous record. And in doing so, she also broke the record previously held by Tom Cruise (he won’t like that) who held his breath for well over six minutes during the filming of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.
“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,” explained Winslet. The underwater scenes are vital for Avatar 2, and it was of high importance that the cast that portrayed the Metkayina tribe had some scuba experience, so the scenes felt as authentic as possible. Cameron also managed to create new technology to film motion capture scenes underwater because, why not?
This wasn’t the only thing that Winslet was proud of though, her character Ronal is also pregnant in the film, and pregnant characters are very rarely seen as formidable action stars in Hollywood. According to Winslet, James Cameron had already made the call that Ronal would be pregnant. “I just thought, ‘My god, that is just so cool,” said Winslet. “Jim has so much admiration for women and pregnant women and what pregnant women are capable of, and how pregnant women are actually more resilient and physically capable than I think people give us credit for.”
The actor also commented by saying, “You just become king of bionic; you feel like you are absolutely superhuman. And so, for Jim to really harness that quality and ability and put it into its Na’vi form, was just amazing. I love that so much.”
You can watch Avatar: The Way of Water this Friday (December 16) at your local cinema and immerse yourself in the world of Pandora once again.
