Kate Winslet reveals why she directed son Joe Anders' film 'Goodbye June'

Kate Winslet couldn’t let someone else direct her son Joe Anders’ screenplay, so she became a director herself.

Winslet has made her directorial debut with Joe’s screenplay Goodbye June. The actress is opening up about the process and how she decided she would direct it herself.

In an interview with Deadline, the Titanic actress said, "Christ knows, I’ve been on enough film sets to know what works and what doesn’t… I think that’s something that I know that I can say, and I’ve been around enough actors to, I think have some degree of instinct about what’s helpful and what’s not."

"Yeah, I have had some really great experiences. And I think of wonderful people like Francis Lee, who I learned so much from, and Todd Haynes, who I learned so much from."

"And I think it just feels great to have directed my first film in the 50th year of my life as a woman. It feels good, it feels good," she added.

As she was already set to produce the film, she realized letting someone else direct it would make it their film, so she decided to helm it herself.

Recalling how it happened, she said she was talking to her son about directors, when she "suddenly felt like I’d been stabbed in the gut."

"And I said to him, 'Oh, I don’t think I can let it go.' I said, 'I don’t think I can give it away, Joe.' And he said, 'What do you mean?'".

The Oscar winner explained to him that "as soon as we give this to another director, it becomes theirs. That’s what happens. So I said that I want for us to really feel like we’ve done this. I want to direct it."

Kate Winslet’s Goodbye June hits select U.K. and U.S. theaters on December 12 before hitting Netflix on December 24.