Kate Winslet Opens Up About Her First Impression of Leonardo DiCaprio On the Set of ‘Titanic’

It has been 27 years since Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio filmed the monster hit Titanic in 1996 (it was ultimately released in late 1997), but Winslet still remembers how she and DiCaprio “clicked immediately” upon meeting.

“Once I started working with Leo, we were able to kind of find our own rhythm,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “And it’s amazing to kind of look back and think about it all over again.” 

Winslet and DiCaprio played lovers Rose DeWitt Bukater and Jack Dawson, respectively; in 1996, DiCaprio was 22, and Winslet just 21 years old. “He was this kind of mess of long, skinny, uncoordinated limbs,” she said. “And he was just very free with himself, and he had this effervescent energy that was really magnetic. And I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be fun. We’re definitely going to get along.’ And we just really did. We just really did.”

Per People, Winslet said she and DiCaprio “connected on so many levels” on set, sparking a friendship and respect for one another that has continued years after Titanic was released. (The two frequently sing one another’s praises in the press.) “He was then very, very smart, very, very curious,” she said. “So he was really fascinated with the period [the Titanic sank in 1912], the details to do with the boat, the lower classes, where those people had come from, how those people had paid for their tickets. That sense of focus on the craft and still really caring deeply about that to this day.”

Eleven years after Titanic, Winslet and DiCaprio worked together again on the film Revolutionary Road, set in the 1950s and released in 2008. Of their friendship, Winslet said “We’ll always just make that call right away. There’s no, like, ‘Hang on, I’ll call you tomorrow.’ It’s instant. And that’s actually really something…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.”