In the fall of 2020, the world media spread the news that actress Kate Winslet, on the set of the film Avatar 2, held her breath underwater without special means for an incredible 7 minutes. 14 sec. We checked whether this was really the case.

How wrote journalists, the 45-year-old actress broke the record of her colleague Tom Cruise, whose hero in the 2015 action film “Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation” spent 6 minutes under water trying to pull out a computer chip while dodging a rotating propeller. Note that Cruise was 52 years old at the time of filming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjvl_3CDRd4

First, let's take a look at the world records for holding your breath underwater. The main discipline in freediving is static apnea, in which a person is underwater without breathing and without moving. But it is also divided into two categories. In the classic version among men in 2014, a record installed Serb Branko Petrovich, who stayed under water for 11 minutes. 54 sec. For women, the same record is 9 minutes. 2 sec. and belongs to the famous Russian freediver Natalya Molchanova. By the way, this sport can hardly be called safe: in 2015, Molchanova died during a dive.

As for Kate Winslet, about this episode of the long filming of the sequel told back in February 2019, one of the producers of the film, Jon Landau: “We built a reservoir that could hold 500,000 gallons of water (2.3 million liters). <…> We taught the actors to hold their breath, because in the scenes they had to swim just like that, without scuba gear. And they have to be prepared for long takes.

I trained with Kate Winslet and she managed to hold her breath for a full 7 minutes. <…> You see Kate going underwater, and she was so comfortable. One day I walked up to the tank in which she was training. There were several windows there. And I see: she just walks along the bottom of the tank left and right, left and right, and then she saw me in the window and waved her hand. I couldn't believe it!

On August 26, 2020, The Hollywood Reporter published interview Winslet. In it, the actress, talking about the filming of the upcoming blockbuster, said: “For the filming of Avatar, I had to learn to freedive, and it was incredible. My longest breath hold was 7 minutes. 14 sec. Crazy thing."

Two months passed, and the whole world learned about Winslet’s achievement after the quote shared The official Twitter account for the Avatar franchise.

Note that Kate Winslet is not the only actress who had to freedive on the set of Avatar 2. In October about a similar experience told and her co-star Sigourney Weaver. She managed to stay under water for a little less - more than 6 minutes, and she admitted that she breathed oxygen before diving. Most likely, Winslet also previously underwent the same procedure (although there is no direct mention of this), because the British record for women in static apnea without oxygen amounts to 6 min. 58 sec. With or without oxygen, the news about the actress’s long immersion turned out to be true.