Kate Winslet on Directing Goodbye June: Leading With Absolute Intentionality

Kate Winslet opens up about stepping into a rare triple role actor, director, and producer for her new film Goodbye June. The project challenged her not only creatively, but emotionally, as she balanced on-screen vulnerability with behind-the-camera leadership.

From the beginning, Winslet knew exactly what she didn’t want the film to become.“The most important thing in terms of making sure that there wasn’t false sentiment was always giving myself plenty of choice, plenty of options from our brilliant actors.”

She speaks passionately about avoiding anything that felt emotionally “false” or overly sentimental, aiming instead for an authentic tone that reflects the messy, complex reality of family.

One of Winslet’s guiding principles was trusting her cast, including Toni Collette, whose ability to balance humor and sincerity became essential.“With Toni Collette being as masterful as she is with comedy… her ability to always play it straight meant the humorous side of that character never felt arch or implausible in any way.”

Winslet explains that when scenes risked tipping too deeply into emotion too fast, she wasn’t afraid to restructure the film in the edit:“Sometimes restructuring scenes was very important when there were two or three scenes closely together that took the audience into an emotional place before they were ready.”

It was in editing, she says, that she felt the full weight of directing for the first time.

Winslet also plays Julia, a character who keeps everything together for her family while suppressing her own emotional needs, a role that mirrored her real experience as a director.“I was carrying a lot… the whole time.” Julia is the responsible sibling, the “fixer” everyone turns to and Winslet found herself doing the same behind the camera: “I was putting everybody else first, which was absolutely the right thing to do.”

With only 35 shooting days and limited time with actors like Helen Mirren, she often pushed her own performance aside in service of the larger picture.

So much of Goodbye June is about sibling relationships and unspoken distance, and Winslet reveals how intentionally she used physical space onscreen to express this. “None of it was an accident. It was all absolutely intentional.”

Sometimes the camera literally kept its distance: “I needed to hold my nerve and stand back sometimes so you could actually observe the physical spaces and separations between them.” Characters choose where they stand, she explains, because of how they feel:

Winslet also experimented with minimizing the set itself for her cast. For deeply intimate scenes, she would lock off the camera and remove the crew entirely, leaving actors alone in the space. “For quieter, more intimate scenes. I wanted the actors to feel somewhat disarmed by how empty those spaces were.”

She recalls Toni Collette asking Where are you going?’ And I said, ‘Well, you don’t need me, do you?’”

This approach helped actors like Helen Mirren access vulnerable performances without distraction and built profound trust.

One of the most visually poetic scenes shows June and Julia lying together watching snow fall and June whispering the idea that she might “come back as snow.” The reflection captured in the hospital window wasn’t planned, but instinctively recognized on set. “The backlight hit the window and gave us the most phenomenal reflection… I knew that was going to become the emotional backdrop of that scene.” The moment resonated personally for Winslet, who has experienced loss herself.

Despite the emotional intensity, Winslet describes the experience of directing for the first time with unfiltered joy.“I just loved it. I never wanted it to finish.”

Watch the full conversation below:

Q&A on the film Goodbye June with actor/director/producer Kate Winslet. Moderated by Mara Webster, In Creative Company.