As many know, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet shot to mega stardom starring as two young lovers in the successful Titanic. After the film, DiCaprio shared that he was hesitant to act alongside Winslet because he didn’t want to revisit another love story with her.
Kate Winslet once revealed why she never dated Leonardo DiCaprio
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio have always been aware of the rumors surrounding their relationship. But when reading all of the headlines trying to romantically link the two together, the pair are sometimes amused by some of these stories. In a 1998 interview with Rolling Stone, Winslet discussed how she felt about others painting their friendship as something it wasn’t.
“Just the notion of that was insane. It would have been absolutely like incest. I have the relationship with Leo that all the women in the world would envy,” Winslet said.
The Reader star believed that their platonic friendship was why they were so close in the first place.
“I think the reason that friendship works is because there was never any romantic thing. 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, but actually, we never did. He always saw me as one of the boys. I’ve never really been a girly-girl,” she once told Marie Claire (via Complex).
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio refused to do another love story together
DiCaprio and Winslet would later reunite after their Titanic days for director Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road. Although they starred as a married couple in the drama, the film wasn’t about romance. Instead, the story followed the destruction of a marriage in the 1950s, and the grief that followed. The story proved to be perfect for the pair, who’ve both refused to co-star in one genre of film.
“Over the years, I would find myself stopping and saying, ‘I don’t know if we should do this again,’” DiCaprio once told Entertainment Weekly. “And then I’d think, ‘What are you, an idiot? Why wouldn’t I want to work with the best actress of her generation? Am I going to be prejudiced against a project just because Kate’s in it?’ I think we both had been actively looking for something else to do together, but we fundamentally knew that we couldn’t tread on any sort of similar territory.”
When asked what kind of film DiCaprio was referring to, Winslet chimed in with the answer.
“Any type of love story imaginable,” she said.
Billy Zane once opened up about Kate Winslet’s relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio on set
Titanic co-star Billy Zane once offered some behind-the-scenes information about Winslet and DiCaprio’s time on Titanic. Speaking to Daily Beast, the actor gave his perspective on the cast’s careers before their Titanic fame.
“Cameron clearly had gone against the grain of Hollywood by casting Kate Winslet, who was the new Brit girl; Leonardo, who was getting great reviews on his films, but they were indies, and I had made this big Paramount movie [The Phantom] that was oddly marketed and didn’t do great in theaters. But [me and Cameron] just hit it off,” Zane said.
Meanwhile, Zane would also corroborate Winslet and DiCaprio’s claims that they weren’t anything other than friends. In fact, Zane asserted that DiCaprio wasn’t even single at the time.
“They were like brother and sister, watching each other’s back,” he shared. “Our dressing rooms were like a dorm room, and I was between them: Leo had a girlfriend who was visiting often and his crew were playing videogames, being a kid. And Kate I think was in a relationship. We were all very close, though.”
