Kate's titanic airbrush

The thighs are smooth and slender while the positively titanic bosom seems to defy the law of gravity.

Film company sources insist that Kate Winslet and not a body double was used in posters for the forthcoming movie Romance and Cigarettes.

In which case it would appear that the 29-year-old actress has once again been subjected to the airbrush treatment.

On the previous occasion, Miss Winslet protested bitterly when her figure was 'excessively' enhanced for the cover of a men's magazine. Experts are in no doubt, however, that the new movie poster is a product of photographic surgery.

'Kate has been given a real skin polish, to the extent that there is now no detail at all,' said Chris Bickmore of the London creative services agency Tapestry MM.

'There are no lines where her foot and hand bend, no blemishes on her skin anywhere and no veins on her hand.

'Her legs would also appear to have been made slightly slimmer, especially around the knees.

'Also as she is quite a voluptuous woman, I think her breasts have definitely had work done.

They would surely sag down to the sides a bit but they appear to be too perfect and wouldn't be this pert and upright.'

It is two years since Miss Winslet's figure was digitally stretched for the cover of GQ magazine, making her legs and stomach far more slender.

She protested: 'I do not look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that. I am proud, you know. It's hard work getting your shape back after two kids but I like the way I look.'

But perhaps she has changed her views in the light of recent comments she made about her naturally curvaceous body.

'My stomach is all crinkly and my boobs, they're like the ears off a dog,' revealed the actress, married to film director Sam Mendes.

In another interview, she said her bottom looked like 'purple sprouting broccoli' when she was expecting Mia - her daughter by former husband Jim Threapleton.

'I was an absolute sight,' she said. 'How can you feel blooming and sexy when you look like the back end of a bus?'

A spokesman for Icon Film Distribution, which will be distributing Romance and Cigarettes in the UK on its August release, admitted: 'The graphics department have had a bit of a go at the poster - not really altering the image as such, but just giving a bit more of a gritty feel.'