Many people would swoon at the chance to kiss Leonardo DiCaprio, but Kate Winslet is here to set the record straight: “It was not all it’s cracked up to be.”
The famous on-screen kiss between Winslet and DiCaprio at the front of the Titanic is one of the most iconic scenes from the 1997 film. But shooting that moment was far from romantic, Winslet revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair published Thursday that it was a “nightmare.”
The Oscar-winner shared that she was constantly out of breath because her corset was so tight, and that her and DiCaprio’s makeup kept rubbing off on each other during takes.
“Oh god, it was such a mess,” she said.
The format of the Vanity Fair interview had Winslet rewatching and commenting on iconic scenes from her career. When the Titanic kiss scene came up, Winslet immediately reacted: “Oh my lordy. This might be really cringe.”
Winslet was only 22 when Titanic came out and DiCaprio was 23. The actors, both of whom have gone on to win Oscars, were still very early in their careers.
As Winslet watched the scene she commented: “See I look at that and I just see how much I couldn’t breathe in that bloody corset.”
“Yep. See I can’t breathe,” she said later in the scene. “My boobs practically up to my chin,” she chuckled.
Winslet explained that this scene needed to be reshot four times in order to get the perfect sunset glow, and her co-star wasn’t exactly making the process easy.
“Oh this was a nightmare, shooting this, because Leo couldn’t stop laughing and we had to reshoot this about four times, because the light — Jim wanted a very specific light for this, obviously, and the sunsets kept changing where we were.”
(Director James Cameron sometimes goes by Jim.)
Another factor that made this scene difficult was that it wasn’t shot on the normal Titanic ship set. The set used for kiss scene was a “a little sort of sawn off bit” of just the ship’s bow, Winslet said.
“We had to climb up a ladder to get to it,” Winslet said, noting that hair and makeup artists couldn’t reach them up there, so she stepped up as the on-set makeup retoucher. She had makeup and brushes and sponges hidden in her costume for the two of them.
“Between takes I was basically redoing our makeup,” she revealed.
And while it may not be noticeable, Winslet confirmed that DiCaprio was wearing makeup for the scene, to give him a “fake tan.”
“So we kept doing this kiss, and I have a lot of pale makeup on,” she said. “I would end up looking as though I had been suckling a caramel chocolate bar after each take. Because his makeup would come off on me.”
Winslet’s makeup would also come off on DiCaprio, leaving him with a patches of pale makeup around his mouth.
Despite discussing all the issues with the scenes, even Winslet couldn’t seem to deny DiCaprio’s charm.
“My god, he’s quite the romancer, isn’t he? No wonder every young girl in the world wanted to be kissed by Leonardo DiCaprio,” she said.
After the scene was finished, Winslet reflected on the impact that 1997’s Titanic continues to have.
“I do feel very proud of it, because I feel that it is that film that keeps giving. Whole other generations of people are discovering the film or seeing it for the first time, and there’s something extraordinary about that,” she said.
“It doesn’t mean that people don’t get me to try and reenact this every time I’m on a flipping boat, which does my head in,” she said, annoyed. “Every time, without fail.”
Titanic was a mega-hit when it first premiered. It was the first film ever to make over US$1 billion worldwide and maintained its position as the highest-grossing film of all time until Cameron beat his own record with Avatar in 2009.
It is currently the fourth highest-grossing film ever, behind both Avatar movies and Avengers: End Game.