She has boasted of being proud of her curves and scorned faddish diets.

But now Oscar hopeful Kate Winslet has admitted she was once "addicted to losing weight."

In a revelation which is set to dismay hordes of women who aspire to her laissez-faire attitude to size and shape, Miss Winslet has confessed to using laxatives for three months to shed the pounds.

• Winslet blasts Hollywood for 'generation of anorexics' • Why you can never be fat and happy by Anne Diamond • PICTURES: Kate's yo-yo figure

The 31-year-old star became hooked on the over-the-counter drugs, which relax the bowel and are often used by anorexia and bulimia sufferers with devastating effects: over-using them can lead to irritable bowel syndrome, intestinal problems and kidney failure.

Miss Winslet said: "When I was 15, I was nearly 14 stone. I was uncomfortable and self-conscious. I knew I wanted to be an actress and was big.

"Over a year I sensibly got down to 10 stone. Then I became addicted to losing weight and went too far.

"I was never anorexic or bulimic. I went through a three-month experimental laxative time which was absolutely awful.

"Luckily I was strong enough to be able to say to myself: 'What are you doing? You are just really hungry.'

"The whole weight thing drives me crazy. This stuff is so important to me because I have been there and know what a vicious cycle it is."

Her confession will come as a shock to those who have admired her for flaunting her voluptuous figure over the years.

Miss Winslet once boasted of feasting on cheese-filled ploughman's lunches every day and vowed never to be a "stick insect."

Resolutely refusing to join the waifs in Hollywood, she insisted movie audiences accept her fuller figure.

She described herself as being happy with her appearance despite looking like "the back end of a bus", her stomach as "crinkly" after giving birth to her two children and her bottom as "purple sprouting broccoli."

An attempt by GQ magazine to air-brush away her curves sparked her chagrin and she told how her perfect Saturday night would be tucking into fish and chips with a glass of wine with her director husband Sam Mendes.

But since basing herself in the US, there has been considerably less of Miss Winslet than before.

She shed the four stone she put on while pregnant and slimmed down to a size eight after seeking advice from Harley Street nutritionist Elizabeth Gibaud, whose facial analysis diet she endorses.

It is a far cry from the 16-year-old Kate who was nicknamed Blubber at school because of her weight.

Her dieting obsession is thought to have kicked in when she started winning film roles at the age of 18 and began existing on apples, raw carrots and black coffee.

But Miss Winslet - who has been nominated for an Oscar for her role in the film Little Children - told Movieline's Hollywood Life magazine she now had a healthy attitude to dieting: "You want to teach young people that beauty comes from within and that food is great and a huge part of life. "I am very, very normal. I am actually proud of all the marks and scars that I bear."

When asked whether she would starve herself for a fortnight for a role, she added: "I have definitely done that in the past. Not this time. I wanted to look like a woman who had a child.

"I forced myself not to have too much anxiety over that."