Kate Winslet is renowned for her fearless film roles — but she isn’t entirely scare-free.
While appearing on the Friday, January 17, episode of The Late Show, Winslet, 49, told host Stephen Colbert about what she refers to as the world’s “scariest animal.”
“I’m honestly not brilliant with cows,” she told Colbert, 60, which drew laughter from both the host and his studio audience. “No, no, no listen, here’s the thing. Someone said to me, ‘Oh you’ve got to learn how to read a field of cows, you have, you’ve got to be careful because if they turn, they’ve gone.’”
The Lee star continued recalling the advice she’d received, detailing that if you see, “their tails are swishin’ and they’re flickin’ like that and there’s flies,” it means they’re unhappy. “They might charge you,” she recalled hearing.
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Winslet added that she’d never realized how dangerous cows could prove to be, telling Colbert that she goes “hiking all the time,” where she will often navigate paths “through fields of cows.”
“I have decided that they are going to stampede me to the ground,” Winslet hilariously concluded with a straight face. The remark led Colbert to wonder, “Has this ever happened?” to which Winslet revealed that cows had indeed stalked her and her mother in the past.
“They were slowly Bo-Peeping it and then they did speed up, really, truly,” Winslet said. “Borderline [a] couple of gallopers, I’d say. However, there are quite a lot of stories in England about people having very nasty run-ins with cows. Very real ones. So I am extremely wary of a field of cows.”
She added that she wanted to “get better at coping” with her fear, telling Colbert that, “they’re not really scary, are they? No, they’re not,” before reiterating that being wary of cows was a “legit fear.”
Colbert’s lighthearted interview question was part of what the TV host calls “The Colbert Questionert,” which comprises 15 interview questions to help him get to know his guests. Previous celebrities to have taken part in the often-hysterical interview series include George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.
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As for Winslet, her cow concerns follow the actress’ candid recollection of one of her most famed onscreen moments. During the September 26 episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, hosted by Josh Horowitz, Winslet revealed that she and Titanic costar Leonardo DiCaprio filmed its notorious door scene in “waist-height” water.
“That was quite an awkward tank, that one,” Winslet told Horowitz. “To burst a bubble, it was waist-height, that tank. So first of all, I was regularly like, ‘Ugh, can I just go for a pee,’ and then I’d get up, get off the door, walk to the edge of the tank that was sort of 20 feet away, and I’d literally have to fling my leg over and climb out the tank and go for a pee and then come back and crawl on the door again.”
She added that DiCaprio, 49, kneeled the entire time he filmed his (spoiler alert) death scene, which has been heavily debated for years.
