Leave it to the film industry to patronize an Oscar-winning veteran just because she’s a woman. Kate Winslet told Vogue the male executives tried it when she was trying to finance her upcoming film Lee, a biopic tracing the life of Lee Miller, a muse to canonical artists, like Picasso and Man Ray, and a WWII photographer known for her searing dispatches from Nazi concentration camps. Lee premiered at TIFF last week, and is currently playing at the festival. “The men who think you want and need their help are unbelievably outraging,†she explained. It’s a shock to no one, but to treat Kate Winslet this way? “I’ve even had a director say to me: ‘Listen, you do my film and I’ll get your little Lee funded …’ Little!†she continued. “Or we’d have potential male investors saying things like, ‘Tell me, why am I supposed to like this woman?’†How unprofessional. In addition to starring, Winslet produced her eight-years-in-the-making passion project, giving her a real say in financing and scripts and casting for the first time. She fronted her own cash when money got precarious and personally covered two weeks of paychecks during preproduction to keep the film on track. Winslet can have it all, but not without some ops making the process irritating as hell.