Kate Winslet Recalled Her First Impressions Of Leonardo DiCaprio While Making “Titanic”
“In the world that we live in now, to have friendships that bind you, and that shared history, it's really something,” Kate said of her former costar and real-life bestie.
After first meeting on the set of Titanic in the ’90s, Kate and Leo became fast friends, and they've maintained a close bond in the public eye for many years since.
From cheering each other on at awards shows to gushing about each other in interviews, Kate and Leo have proved themselves to be one of the most beloved duos in Hollywood.
In fact, the pair are so close that Leo even walked Kate down the aisle at her 2012 wedding to Edward Abel Smith.
And now, over 25 years since the release of the movie that bonded them for life, Kate is reflecting on her first encounters with her “ferociously intelligent” Titanic costar.
“Once I started working with Leo, we were able to kind of find our own rhythm. And it's amazing to kind of look back and think about it all over again,” the Oscar winner says in a new behind-the-scenes clip from Titanic’s upcoming 4K Ultra HD DVD release, obtained by Entertainment Tonight.
Recalling a then-21-year-old Leo as a “mess of long, skinny, uncoordinated limbs,” Kate adds that they “clicked immediately, right away.”
“He was just very free with himself, and he had this effervescent energy that was really magnetic,” she continues. “And I remember thinking, Oh, this is gonna be fun. We're definitely gonna get along. And we just really did. We just really did.”
Adorably, Kate recalls in the featurette that Leo was completely “fascinated” while making the iconic movie, obsessing over everything from “the details to do with the boat” to “the lower classes, where those people had come from, how those people had paid for their tickets.”
“He was then very, very smart; very, very curious,” she says. “We connected on so many levels. That sense of focus on the craft, and still really caring deeply about that to this day.”
As a reflection of how their friendship has lasted over the years, the clip concludes with Kate revealing that they're always in contact over the phone.
“And we'll always just make that call right away. There's no, like, ‘Hang on, I'll call you tomorrow.’ It's instant,” she says, adding, “You know, if you think about it, in the world that we live in now, to have friendships that bind you, and that shared history, it's really something.”
Given that they’re so publicly adoring of each other, fans have theorized that the pair might be “soulmates” and that the reason Leo has yet to settle down is that Kate is actually “the one for him.”
However, despite joking about their extremely close relationship over the years, they’ve always made it clear that they’ve never been anything more than friends — with Kate telling Rolling Stone way back in 1998 that a romance between them would feel “absolutely like incest.”
“I think the reason that friendship works is because there was never any romantic thing,” she also told Marie Claire, per HuffPost, in 2014. “It's so disappointing for people to hear that, because in the soap opera of the Kate and Leo story, we fell in love at first sight and had a million snogs.”
She added, “But actually, we never did. He always saw me as one of the boys. I've never really been a girly girl.”
Likewise, Leo — who is notoriously private when it comes to his personal life — gushed about Kate while talking to Esquire back in 2010, describing her as one of his “dearest friends.”
“We have the ultimate trust in each other,” he said.
