Known for starring in Titanic and The Reader, Winslet opened up about her positive approach to ageing and her track record of calling out publications for editing how she looked.
"It really bothered me when I realised as a young woman that magazines had the ability to alter an image," Winslet told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs with Lauren Laverne.
"I didn't sign up for that. I didn't say you could take my photograph and then do whatever the hell you want with it. Absolutely not.
"I also realised that nobody else was calling them out on it.
"I didn't want any young woman, even just one, to look at that image and think, 'oh my God, I want to look like that'. That's not me.
"That's the same message I've always tried to give and I think that's why I live my life with intention and integrity, having a face that moves.
"That's also how I do my job. I want to play characters who have wrinkles and crow's feet and a face that's changing with age and a body that's moving with the passing decades. That's life."
Winslet recently made her directorial debut with the Christmas family drama Goodbye June.
The film, which Winslet also stars in, was written by her son Joe Anders and follows four siblings whose lives change when their mother's health takes a turn for the worse during the festive season.
Inspired by the death of Winslet's mother, the film also stars Dame Helen Mirren, Timothy Spall, Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, Stephen Merchant and Toni Collette.
Winslet said there was still a lot to "unlearn" with regard to how women in the film and TV industry were spoken to.
"There are things that have been said to me as a female director that would never be said to my male counterpart," she said.
"Just the way someone might phrase something. They might say things like 'don't forget to be confident in your choices' and I want to sort of say, don't talk to me about confidence, because if that's one thing I haven't ever lacked, is exactly that.
"That person wouldn't say that to a man.
"It's just a little internal fire that, ever so often, gets ignited by things that occur and then I'm able to calmly say to that person, there's a different way of phrasing that you know. It's worth thinking about it."
Winslet is also known for starring in the 2006 festive film The Holiday alongside Cameron Diaz, Jude Law and Jack Black.
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