Co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet found fame through each other after being launched into the global spotlight through James Cameron’s billion-dollar epic, Titanic. The tragic 1997 tearjerker proved just as monumental of a mile marker for the director as it did for each of his protagonists in the fatalistic historical romance drama. However, what was highly dramatized and fictionalized for the screen only depicted a fraction of the devastation, chaos, and terror that the 1500 people who drowned along with the shipwreck felt on the night of 15th April 1912.
It is not surprising then that the emotionally draining and heavy production of the film would be interspersed with moments that kept the cast light with humor and laughter, especially when it came to Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Part-Time Job on the Sets of the Titanic
While James Cameron was busy directing the crew and cast about their daily business, Leonardo DiCaprio was busy making Kate Winslet’s life miserable. The two stars became so close while filming Titanic that they eventually turned out to recognize each other more as siblings than as potential partners or lovers. While the fans would have grown essentially feral if DiCaprio and Winslet were ever to transport their on-screen chemistry to the real world, the co-stars could hardly keep it together with their intimate scenes on set as anything romantic felt “incestuous” to the pair.
Keeping in line with their sibling-like relationship – a bond that endured throughout the decades between the two A-listers – it was DiCaprio’s solemn duty to annoy Winslet to no end. As the latter would later go on to recount in an interview with Rolling Stone:
We’d do the most ridiculous things to each other. He’d be tickling me, groping me, winding me up. And I’d be doing the same thing back, sort of grabbing his bum.
Of course, she was no one-sided partisan of the playful banter that persisted between the two. DiCaprio in turn was just as much responsible for their chaotic relationship as Winslet.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Love For “Best Friend” Kate Winslet
When James Cameron cast his leading protagonists, the actors who would bring alive the fatalistic, fated, and doomed romance of the two star-crossed lovers on RMS Titanic, little did he know that he was the agent of the beginning of an epic friendship that extended beyond the sets of the Titanic and filtered into the real world. DiCaprio recalled about his co-star in an interview later:
She was my best friend for seven months. We’d unload the stresses of the shoot to each other, vent to each other, watch out for each other. Kate was just the perfect person to work with because she was very much one of the guys, and it would have been much harder without her. We were partners.
James Cameron’s Titanic became the highest-grossing movie of all time, fetching $1.84 billion globally since its premiere in 1997 against a budget of $200 million.
Source: Rolling Stone
