Aurora Starchild
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio left an indelible sweet spot in our hearts as Jack and Rose in Titanic. The doomed lovers swept us off our feet with their sensual interactions and seemingly sincerely reciprocated charisma. Kate and Leo actually became best friends for life after filming Titanic. It all started with Kate flashing Leo — for a hilarious reason.
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How Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio Met
Kate and Leo first met briefly during the Cannes film festival. He had a broken leg, and they were in a hotel room with David Blaine performing magic tricks. At that point, each had heard that the other might be cast in Titanic, but they didn’t learn much about each other.
In a Rolling Stone interview, however, Kate dished a little bit more about that meeting. Apparently, she made it happen.
“I was thinking, ‘I’m going to persuade him to do this, because I’m not doing it without him, and that’s all there is to it,’” she said. “‘I will have him.’ Because he is fu**ing brilliant. He’s a fu**ing genius, and that was absolutely why.”
And while she has admitted to finding Leo attractive (he’d already starred in Romeo and Juliet and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape), which made her a bit nervous, she’s never hooked up with him to this day.
Kate Winslet Flashed Leonardo DiCaprio on the First Day They Filmed Titanic
They met again on the set of Titanic. The very first day, Kate was asked to lie naked in front of Leo for the nude portrait scene. Kate revealed this detail in the book James Cameron’s Titanic.
Leo then said that Kate decided to prank him to break the ice.
“She had no shame with it,” he said. “She wanted to break the ice a little beforehand, so she flashed me. I wasn’t prepared for that, so she had one up on me. I was pretty comfortable after that.”
Leo Decided to Make a Job Out of Pranking Kate While On-Set
From that point on, it was game on. Leo made it his second job to get back at Kate as often as he could.
In a cast and crew interview with Rolling Stone, Billy Zane said “Grossing Kate out was purely Leo’s job. He got really good at it. If he wasn’t rolling back his eyelids, he was making objets d’art out of bodily fluids.”
James Cameron added that Leo would fart in a long coat that he had to wear while shooting. And then he would “sweep the coat over her face. I mean, if anybody else in the world did that, they’d get slapped, and the other person would walk away and not talk to them for a week. With Leo, Kate would just crack up.”
The two hit it off immediately. Kate told Rolling Stone that they “were kind of the two goofy kids on the set,” adding that his gorgeousness worried her. “But the second we met, we just completely clicked,” she said. “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.”
Leo added that Kate was his “best friend” for the 7 months that they were shooting.
“We’d unload the stresses of the shoot to each other, vent to each other, watch out for each other,” he told Rolling Stone. “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.”
Kate did mention that they’d hang out under blankets giving each other sex advice in their off time, but it was while they still had clothes on. It was very much like two best buddies, and she brushed off the tabloids’ obsession with them getting together as “incestuous.”
Kate and Leo Are Each Other’s Favorite Actors (and Friends)
Time and time again, Kate Winslet has gushed over her best friend Leo and vise-versa.
In an interview with Glamour, Kate said that she and Leo keep in touch all the time. “You don’t even want to know the last conversation we had, because it was so funny and made me laugh so much,” she said. “We found ourselves saying to each other, ‘Can you imagine if the world really knew the stupid things we say?’”
In an interview with Oprah, Kate said that she considers Leo’s acting to be “brilliant.”
“Initially, I thought, ‘Ugh, how am I gonna work with this beautiful man who’s such a brilliant actor?’ And I met him and he’s honestly so lovely and down-to-earth and normal and so good at what he does.” She added that they had a “brother-sister thing” and that ultimately got them through the movie.
The Catch Me If You Can actor responded that the feeling is mutual. “I feel the same way about her,” he said. “If it wasn’t for her making that film, we would have been shrapnel at this point. It was just the toughest film we ever had to make, and we were partners together.”
When an audience member asked who his favorite actress to do an onscreen kiss with was, he responded, “I’m just gonna go with Kate Winslet, good old classic.”
But the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind actress denies this. In an interview with Extra, she claimed that he “hated” kissing her. “I can tell you right now, he hated it,” she said. “He would complain bitterly.”
“Not at all,” Leo contested.
But then he admitted that the real problem wasn’t actually kissing his acting partner, but the makeup getting smeared around. “I would have a different color base than she did. And then our makeup would swap.”
Kate and Leo Have Supported Each Other’s Careers and Grown Together
When Kate won her first big award in 2009— a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama — she broke down in tears during her acceptance speech. She started telling Leo how much she loves him (he had co-starred with her in Revolutionary Road, the film which got her the award).
“Leo, I’m so happy I can stand here and tell you how much I love you. And how much I’ve loved you for 13 years.” (At this point, the camera is just looking at Leo, who blows her a tiny kiss).
“And your performance in this film is nothing short of spectacular and just… I love you with all my heart, I really do.” Kate then went on to thank her then-husband, Sam Mendes, who directed the film.
Soon after, Kate and Leo appeared on Oprah once again. This time, Leo appeared via Skype. Both actors told Oprah that their very close friendship allowed them to work with each other on Revolutionary Road in a way that boosted their performance. Because they know each other so well, they were able to push each other’s buttons and know each other’s boundaries.
At the 2016 Oscars, Kate said she had to attend because she felt that Leo might win. “I feel very strongly that it may possibly be Leo’s year. [H]e is my closest friend in the world and I just couldn’t imagine not being there to support him,” reports Vanity Fair.
Leonardo DiCaprio Walked Kate Winslet Down the Aisle at Her Wedding
Okay, we know what you’re thinking. “If these two love each other so much, why don’t they get married?” Well, as we said — they said — they’re like brother and sister.
In fact, Leo gave his best friend away at her secret wedding to Richard Branson’s nephew. A rep for Kate Winslet confirmed to People that she had wed Ned Rock’nRoll (birth name Edward Abel Smith) in a private ceremony in New York in 2012. Allegedly, neither the bride nor the groom’s parents were aware of the wedding.
And while there were very few attendees, Leo was there. And he was the guy who walked Kate down the aisle to give her away.
Swoon. (But yuck, right).
