Kate Winslet has spoken candidly about feeling "bullied" after Titanic made her a major star.

The British actress had enjoyed success before Titanic, most notably with an Oscar-nominated performance in 1995's Sense and Sensibility, but director James Cameron's record-breaking blockbuster took her career to a different level in 1997.

"I went into self-protective mode right away," Winslet recalled on Marc Maron's WTF podcast. "It was like night and day from one day to the next. I was subject to a lot of personal physical scrutiny, I was criticized a lot and the British press were quite unkind to me."

"I felt bullied if I’m honest," she continued. "I remember thinking, 'This is horrible and I hope it passes.' It did definitely pass but it made me realize that, if that’s what being famous was, I was not ready to be famous, definitely not."

Happily, Winslet went on to say that "all of that stuff evaporated a bit" after she became a mother a few years later, causing the press scrutiny to diminish a little. She also explained why she made a conscious decision to choose smaller movies over blockbuster roles in the years following Titanic's enormous success.

"I was still learning how to act, I felt I wasn’t ready to do lots of big Hollywood jobs," she said. "I didn’t want to make mistakes and blow it, I wanted to be in it for the long game. I strategically tried to find small things so I could understand the craft a bit better and maintain some degree of privacy and dignity."

We recently rounded up 10 things you might not know about Kate Winslet, whose performance in her latest film Ammonite has made her an awards season contender once again.

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