Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio were recently reunited after not being able to see each other for over three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic keeping them separated. And when they were reunited in Las Angeles, it was emotional for the actress.
“I couldn’t stop crying,” Winslet told The Guardian. “I’ve known him for half my life! It’s not as if I’ve found myself in New York or he’s been in London and there’s been a chance to have dinner or grab a coffee and a catchup. We haven’t been able to leave our countries. Like so many friendships globally, we’ve missed each other because of COVID.”
It has been 25 years since they first met on the set of Titanic, when Winslet was just 21 years old. Titanic was a movie that put both stars on the scene, and both have done well for themselves since. After Titanic, they starred together as husband and wife in the 2008 movie Revolutionary Road.
Titanic, of course, was the story of the doomed ship on its maiden voyage. Specifically, it focused on the story of 17-year-old Rose, an aristocrat who fell in love with a kind but poor artist named Jack during the ill fated voyage. For a number of years, it was the top grossing movie of all time until it was bumped to number two by the movie Avatar, also directed by James Cameron.
Titanic, in addition to really launching the careers of Winslet and DiCaprio, also featured the mega hit song “My Heart Will Go On” from Celine Dion. That song has been covered many times since, but no cover has had the same impact of Dion’s original version.
Over the years, there has been great debate about whether or not there was enough room for Jack on the door that Rose used to survive the sinking of the Titanic. In 2017, Winslet addressed this very debate on an episode of Late Night with Stephen Colbert.
On that episode, she claimed that Jack should have tried harder to get on the door, claiming that there was plenty of room for both of them to survive. Her comments came not long after James Cameron himself weighed in on the matter, saying he finds it silly to be having the conversation 20 years after the film’s release.
In a conversation with Vanity Fair, Cameron said, “Had he lived, the ending of the film would have been meaningless. The film is about death and separation; he had to die. So whether it was that, or whether a smoke stack fell on him, he was going down. It’s called art, things happen for artistic reasons, not for physics reasons.”
Overall, though, it is comforting to know that Winslet and DiCaprio remained such close friends that a reunion after a lengthy separation was so emotional for the actress.
