Kate Winslet on industry sexism that nearly stopped her directorial debut

Kate Winslet has revealed that some crew members on her directorial debut Goodbye June were underpaid because she couldn’t get a big enough budget approved for the film.

Winslet attributed the budget constraint to sexism in the industry. The Titanic alum claimed she had to call in favors to get the film made since people were reluctant to produce a film directed by a woman.

Which led to the crew making less than they normally would on a film.

Appearing on Kermode & Mayo's Take podcast on Saturday, Kate said: "When you're a woman, you do a huge amount of ringing around and calling in favours so sometimes with a budget like Goodbye June you might be asking people to come and work for less than their weekly rate."

"I'm talking about department heads and their crew. Sometimes people take a little bit of a hit because they want to come and be part of that experience and they want to support you and we did have that on Goodbye June," the Lee star shared.

"It's somehow there's this societal assumption that they will automatically know what they're doing, whereas the same assumption is not made of women," she said of male actors taking up directing.

"That's not right and actually it's not fair because what it does mean is that it will be harder for us to get films made, harder for us to get the kind of budgets that we need to make those films," she pointed out.

"Strangely with male actors - and this is absolutely no criticism of them at all because when I think about the brilliant young actors in this country who have been directing recently it's incredibly exciting - but they're just allowed to get on with it," she reasserted. 

Kate Winslet made her directorial debut with the story written by her son Joe Anders. The actress also starred as one of Helen Mirren's titular character's kids. Others how played her siblings in Goodbye June include Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough, and Johnny Flynn.