Leo DiCaprio Had Terrible Time Filming Titanic, And Made Sure Everyone Else Did Too

Titanic was one of the biggest and most expensive projects in the history of cinema. Initially predicted to be a flop and a waste of $200 million, it ended up being a resounding success around the world.

The movie was nominated for 14 Oscars, 11 of which it won.

Now it's hard to imagine anyone but Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the roles of Jack and Rose.

However, few people know that the male lead not only almost missed out on the lead role in his career by his own fault, but also behaved like a real diva on the set.

The fact that DiCaprio almost missed his role in Titanic was revealed by director James Cameron himself. Cameron admitted that he liked DiCaprio at the first meeting, but he still wanted the actor to audition and read the lines with Kate Winslet.

DiCaprio announced that he wouldn't participate in the readings and Cameron immediately said goodbye to him, which surprised the actor. After that, the actor agreed:

“And he didn't want to read [for the part]. He said, 'Oh, I don't read.' You know, I'm like, 'Well, are you a little diva? […] See ya. Wouldn't want to be ya.' So, I called his bluff, right? And he went and read. And he was spectacular, of course.”

The filming of Titanic took 160 days, with a 14-hour day for the crew and actors. Undoubtedly, such a schedule will exhaust anyone, but DiCaprio found his original way to show his dissatisfaction with the tight schedule – he made shooting difficult for everyone else.

He constantly pranked Kate Winslet and not all his jokes were harmless. Once he even dropped a bucket of ice on James Cameron. But it wasn't the ice that annoyed the director the most, it was the way Leo approached filming in the water:

“I always say Leo was like a Siamese cat trying to get into the water. I mean, he made a huge production out of getting into the water every time. […] He hated to get wet, or he pretended he hated to get wet.”

At first it seemed to the director that the actor was afraid of the water because of his poor swimming skills, but then it turned out that Leo ... is a certified scuba diver, as the actor told the director while filming the last scene in the water:

“I wanted to wring his neck. What was all this stuff with the cat and getting into water?”

But now that Titanic has become one of the pillars of modern cinema, it can be said that the suffering of both actors and the director has paid off.

Sources: Entertainment Tonight, NME