Kate Winslet smashes Tom Cruise’s record while filming for the Avatar sequel, and it’s left her feeling ‘superhuman' as a 'middle-aged woman’

You’d think that Kate Winslet would’ve steered clear of going anywhere near water after everything she endured in 1997’s Titanic.

However, losing Leo to the ocean and spending hours floating around in cold waters didn’t deter the Oscar and Emmy winning actress from smashing Tom Cruise’s record for filming underwater.

Tom filmed underwater for six minutes for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation – something Kate made easy work beating.

While speaking to Empire magazine about her role in the much-anticipated Avatar sequel – reuniting Kate with Titanic director James Cameron - she revealed how she learned to hold her breath in a 900,000 gallon water tank. And she did so for longer than any other cast member.

“Seven minutes and 14 seconds, baby” – to quote her exact words. That smashes Tom Cruise’s record by over one minute and 14 seconds.

She also described how, despite sounding like an arduous task, it was actually rather pleasant.

She said, “God, it’s just wonderful. Your mind completely drifts off. You can’t think about anything, you can’t make lists in your head, you’re just looking at the bubbles underneath you.”

Kate talked about what it meant to her as an actress over a certain age to be out there smashing the record of action stars.

She told the magazine, “The most amazing thing for me as a middle-aged woman was to learn something not just new, but superhuman!”

Speaking to another outlet, she couldn’t help but feel proud of her accomplishments, telling Entertainment Tonight, “It was brilliant and I was very proud of myself and I’ll probably never be able to do it again.”

She also joked about how her husband had tried to help her learn the skill, only for her to show him how it was really done.

The Titanic star explained how her husband, Ned Abel Smith, trained with her “and he got quite good at the breath holding as well. But he did … black out.”

Never send a man to do a woman’s work.

In the film, titled Avatar: The Way of Water, Kate will play Ronal, a free diver of the Metkayina. The movie will be released on December 16, 2022.