New York, Feb 16: English actress Kate Winslet has revealed that while studying illiterate people for her role as a Nazi in the film `The Reader', she realised that they were ashamed of themselves and could not maintain a relationship.

Winslet revealed that the people she studied were so mortified by their weaknesses that they were not able to have emotions.

"None of the people I worked with were married," the New York Daily News quoted her as saying.

"They''re afraid of being found out. They can''t indulge in intimacy.

"They had no imagination. They''d never read fairy tales. They can''t go into those emotional environments," she added.

Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, a German tram conductor who has an affair with a boy half her age in `The Reader'. (ANI)