‘Titanic’ star Kate Winslet says kissing Leonardo

Kate Winslet does not look back on her big kiss with Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic” fondly.

While discussing the iconic “I’m flying” scene from the movie, in which she and DiCaprio stand on the bow of the ship, Winslet admitted it looked romantic on screen, but said behind the scenes, it was anything but.

“My god, he’s quite the romancer, isn’t he? No wonder every young girl in the world wanted to be kissed by Leonardo DiCaprio,” Winslet said. “It was not all it’s cracked up to be.”

The Academy Award-winning actress called shooting the scene “a mess,” attributing the issue to many different factors.

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Some of the factors included her dress being so tight she could not breathe, banging her leg on the railing of the ship a few times and being so far from the crew that their hair and makeup team could not reach them.

To access the set, they “had to climb up a ladder,” meaning Winslet had to hide her makeup and brushes on one side of her jacket and DiCaprio’s makeup and brushes on the other side, and adjust their makeup in between takes.

“We kept doing this kiss, and I’ve got a lot of pale makeup on, and I would have to do our makeup checks — on both of us, between takes — and I would end up looking as though I’d been sucking a caramel chocolate bar after each take because his makeup would come off on me,” she recalled. “And he just looked like there was a bit missing from his face because there was this big pale bit from all my makeup getting onto him.”

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Aside from all the technical issues, director James Cameron had a very specific vision in mind for the scene, which led to them having to do many takes to get it just right.

“This was a nightmare,” she explained. “Leo couldn’t stop laughing, and we had to reshoot this about four times because [James Cameron] wanted a very specific light for this, obviously, and the sunsets kept changing where we were.”

In the 1997 film, Winslet and DiCaprio played passengers on the “Titanic” from different social classes who fall in love and fight to stay together, even after the ship sinks. The film was a huge success, winning 11 Academy Awards, including best picture, and earning Winslet her first Academy Award nomination for actress in a leading role.

While it was a “nightmare” to film the famous scene, Winslet can look back on the overall experience of making the film as a positive one.

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“I do feel very proud of it, because I feel that it is that film that just keeps giving,” Winslet said. “Whole other generations of people are discovering the film or seeing it for the first time and there’s something extraordinary about that.”

One of the ways in which the film keeps giving in Winslet’s life is when people ask her to reenact the famous scene whenever she is on a boat, “without fail,” saying “It does my head in.”