Kate Winslet is the cover girl for the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar, and she’s still taking about how she can’t take a role without dropping her drawers. What’s weird about the interview is that Kate comes across as a little annoyed at certain points, but I don’t think she’s being interviewed to promote any movie or anything. It seems the only she’s promoting is her deal with Lancôme – she’s the current “face” of the brand. Kate talks a lot about winning the Oscar and her own fashion sense. It seems Kate feels it’s “now or never” for the miniskirts. She’s also polishing her Everyday Woman cred by trying to tone down expectations that she’s some sort of glamour puss:

For this year’s Academy Awards, where she won the Oscar for Best Actress, Kate Winslet wore a highly glamorous one-shouldered blue-gray Yves Saint Laurent evening gown. But a little part of her — metaphorically, at least — was in tennis whites. “I wanted to run over to my parents and do one of those Wimbledon moments when the person jumps from the court and leaps over the audience and the bleachers,” she says, her face creasing into a smile. “I did have the urge to do that.”

Returning to New York the next day, Kate discovered that you do, in fact, have to put your Oscar through the X-ray machine at the airport. “They say, ‘Is that it, in the bag?’ and I was like, ‘Yep!'” Kate drank champagne on the flight and took pictures while her golden boy was passed around the flight crew.

Even though she returned the champion, Kate notes of the endless awards season, “It’s very hard to feel like yourself because you’re not; you’re on show. In the old days, I’d just wing it, but now you need to give people what they want, which is someone looking composed, fresh, and put together.” But she gleefully defuses the glamour mythology.

“Our knickers will still go up our ass at the most inappropriate moment. And we’ll still want to flick them out, but you can’t, because someone is going to catch you.” So what does one do? “Oh, I run behind pillars and things.”

Kate hasn’t really gone all shy and retiring on the red carpet. After years of wearing long, she’s more recently taken a short cut — sporting, among others, a curve-loving Hervé Léger and a racy Balmain number. (She’s still legging it today, perched on the couch in a gold Calypso minidress.) “I danced a lot when I was younger, and I’ve always had decent, shapely legs and thought it’s now or never,” she says. “I mean, when you’re pushing 40, are you really going to wander around in a dress that’s midthigh length? So I thought, Oh, f-ck it, I’m just going to do it.”

And so began the thousandth round of Kate Winslet body speculation. “I’ve heard, ‘Oh, she’s toned and she’s lost weight,’ but I am exactly the same as I’ve always been. The one thing that had to go during awards season was exercise. People would say to me, ‘Oh, come on …’ like I was lying about it!” The topic clearly fatigues her. “Some may find it hard to believe it, but I don’t care about that stuff.”

But Oprah Winfrey does, as she proclaimed gloriously to the world when Kate was on her show promoting The Reader — in which her character, former Nazi guard Hanna Schmitz, is often naked — “God bless your real breasts!” Kate shrugs and says, “I’m used to people openly discussing my t-ts. If people are noticing my boobs in a movie and saying they do what real boobs do, then that’s great.” But, like her legs, the boobs have a shelf life. “I’ll be 34 in October. I can’t keep getting away with it. There was so much of it in The Reader because the story required it, but people have seen enough of my bum and my boobs. I have to put them back.”

Sure, Kate has an Oscar, a lauded husband, and two fetching children (Mia, 8, and Joe, 5), but she’s not Gisele. She’s one of us … ish. “Part of the reason Lancôme asked me [to represent the brand] was because I come across as a woman other women can identify with. The media plays such a big role in how women measure themselves against other women, so I can be in a position where I can say beauty comes from within, we’re not all perfect, and the covers of magazines are of course retouched. We do not look like that.” She points to her forehead. “I have wrinkles here, which are very evident, and I will particularly say when I look at movie posters, ‘You guys have airbrushed my forehead. Please can you change it back?’ I’d rather be the woman they’re saying ‘She’s looking older’ about than ‘She’s looking stoned.'”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

I like that Kate has a real body, and I totally appreciate her honesty and her humility. That being said, I for one am tired of seeing her boobs. I would love to see Kate in a role where she was totally covered throughout the entire movie. I think Kate is a wonderful actress, but unfortunately her boobs and her vadge-wig get all of the attention. I know I’m being picky, but I just think Kate is in that dangerous territory where her nudity becomes her acting crutch. I hope she changes it up for her next roles.

Kate Winslet is shown at the premiere of Away We Go on 6/1/09. Credit: WENN.com