Kate Winslet broke Tom Cruise’s diving record for ‘Avatar 2’ – but where’s the scene?

When Tom Cruise dove into an action scene in Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation, he was underwater for six minutes. The result: an impressive scene that is one of the many highlights of the film, and also a record. Apparently no movie star has held their breath for that long during a take (at least no one has documented it before).

But two years ago the news was doing the rounds That Kate Winslet Cruise’s record while filming”Avatar: The way of the waterpulverized. She would have stayed underwater for a whopping 7 minutes and 14 seconds without an oxygen tank or similar technical aids and held your breath. She used a technique all stars had to learn for Avatar 2: breath-hold diving, also known as freediving. It is a technique that you can use to slowly get your body used to optimizing its own oxygen consumption – and so you can stay underwater for a long time without oxygen replenishment.

Kate Winslet: Dive record just part of practice and preparation

But anyone who’s seen “Avatar 2: The Way Of Water” is probably saying, Okay, I remember Tom Cruise’s impressive action scene years later, but where the hell is the extraordinary diving scene with Kate Winslet in Avatar 2? As the pregnant clan leader Ronal, she impresses as a tough warrior, but she rarely has much action underwater. A lengthy encounter with a Tulkun lady, Ronal’s soul sister, is the only scene where we see her immersed a bit longer. But other figures have much more detailed and impressive underwater moments.

Of course, since “Avatar 2” and “Avatar 3″ were filmed together, it would be conceivable that the recording of the diving record would not be seen until the third film – even though those involved always said it happened during the filming of ” avatar 2″. to be. But comments now made by director James Cameron and lead actress Kate Winslet make it clear that she wasn’t in the water that long for a specific scene, but to practice and prepare for her role… and because she was obsessed with it to break a record.

Winslet was “obsessed with preparation” and “plunged into the freediving technique” to better understand and prepare her character. director Cameron explained . After all, Ronal belongs to a very special species of the Na’vi, who grew up under water, as it were. It was therefore important for Kate Winslet to remain completely calm underwater, to be in her element. Cameron, who is an avid diver himself, explained that Winslet was a natural.

Opposite to Cameron then followed. There is video of Winslet’s record dive, but it’s important to note that she’s in static apnea. She’s not swimming around, she’s in a zen-like state where your heart rate drops. This is part of the training to be able to stay under water for so long. So Winslet didn’t actually complete the record dive while filming a scene, just during the whole take.

Kate Winslet: ‘There was just an opportunity to break a record’

By the way, Kate Winslet owns the said video and cherishes it like a treasure. It also shows her showing up and then asking, “Am I dead? Did I die?” And the next question was immediately: “How was my time?” When she found out she had broken the record, she immediately asked to send it to James Cameron on set. Incidentally, her comment that it was “radioed to the set” further confirms that the record was set during practice and not during the shoot itself.

As Winslet explains in an interview with Variety, that she didn’t have to hold her breath for seven minutes before the shoot. It was just a chance to break a record: “I wanted to break my own record, which was already six minutes and 14 seconds. And so I thought, ‘Let’s go!’ And so I beat my own record by a minute.”

Incidentally, the world record diving with a single breath and without supplemental oxygen supply underwater since 2021 is 24 minutes and 37.36 seconds. It’s doubtful that Kate Winslet, who is probably very obsessed with records, will tackle it too. After all, record holder Budimir Šobat is not only a freediver, but has only been training for the record dive for more than a year.

However, we can still hope for a big Kate Winslet dive scene in Avatar 3

So Kate Winslet stayed underwater for minutes at a time, even though it wasn’t overly necessary to shoot her individual scenes. On the one hand it was about training, and for her personally also about getting into the skin of her character. That said, we’re optimistic we’ll still see some underwater action starring Kate Winslet. In “Avatar 3,” her character has likely become a mother, meaning she’s even more mobile underwater without her pregnancy belly. and when James Cameron has a natural like Winslet around him, it would be remiss not to include a major diving scene in the plot. We can’t even imagine that he didn’t.

Whether Winslet’s zen-like plunge is really enough to break Tom Cruise’s own record while filming a scene is for those interested in such records to decide.

By the way, when we got to meet them in Berlin recently, we wanted to know from the stars how long Sam Worthington and Stephen Lang have survived underwater. The answer is in the interview. Meanwhile, Avatar 2: The Way Of Water is already hitting theaters.