Why ‘Titanic’ Was An Unsinkable Blockbuster Before It Set Sail

There are few things more satisfying than a “Titanic” rewatch. Three hours and change of extracting every single part of the spectrum of human emotions poured out on screen by director James Cameron. Anchored by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, “Titanic” made history as the first film to cross $1 billion at the box office and tied for the most Oscar wins at 11.

And Access Hollywood was there for it all!

Behold everything the iconic cast and crew had to say to us over the years about their experience making the unsinkable blockbuster.

James Cameron actually went down to the wreck… 

“You’re taking our million-dollar director where? In a Russian submarine? No way,” submersible cameraman Ralph White, who passed away in 2008, told Access in 1998. “Jim said, ‘I’m going to do it or this film isn’t going to be done.’” It was dangerous, of course. Cameron described the pressure at the bottom of the ocean as follows: “You don’t have to worry about it if it fails,” he said. “Even the ‘o’ of ‘oh s***’ won’t even get processed through your brain.”

Leonardo DiCaprio almost didn’t accept the role of Jack…

“The scariest part of making a film [is] when you start trying to put that face over that shadowy form that you’ve created as a writer,” Cameron said of casting Jack while speaking with Access around the release in 1997, “Once I decided I needed Leonardo, Leonardo had to decide he needed us and that, that took some time,” Cameron explained. “I was adamant about getting Leonardo…he was relatively unknown at that time he was busy making ‘Romeo + Juliet’ but that hadn’t come out yet so thinking of him as a romantic lead was a whole new idea…He reads one scene from the film and I’m like, ‘Huh he’s the guy,’ so I audition him for 15 minutes and he auditioned me for three months.”

Even Leo’s “Romeo + Juliet” co-star Paul Rudd encouraged the young actor to take the role, as he recalled while promoting “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” in 2021, “I’ve just been offered the role in ‘Titanic,’” Paul remembered his “Romeo + Juliet” co-star telling him. “Oh my God, that’s incredible, you should do it,” Paul replied, to which he said Leo shrugged, “Eh…I don’t know what I’ll do.” Of course, he ended up taking the role.

While on the set of “Ghosts of the Abyss” in 2003, Cameron reflected on working with the young actor on “Titanic,”telling Access, “I thought he was one of the best actors I’ve worked with when I worked with him in ‘Titanic’ but he’s certainly learning. I think he’s matured physically as well in a way that, you know, he can do just about anything he wants.” Just two years later in 2005, Cameron added of his protagonist, “He’s always have had more natural talent than any other ten actors. It’s just a question of letting his work process catch up with his natural talent. I think I helped him with a little of that.”

But there was only one person for Rose: Kate Winslet…

Cameron knew Kate was the right fit from the beginning, as he told Access in 1997. “There’s a kind of luminosity about [Kate], not just visually, but just, just kind of like her. Her spirit comes through in her acting,” he explained at the time. And Kate made it clear to Cameron she really wanted the part. “She basically just said I don’t understand why you’re seeing anybody else because I’m obviously Rose. And all of which of course had zero effect because I would never cast somebody in a 100-plus million-dollar film just because they wanted the part,” he recalled Kate saying. After she was set, Rose started to take shape, starting with the red hair that became iconic! In 2004, Kate told Access about the time when her daughter Mia Threapleton’s friend watched “Titanic” when she was about 4 and said, “Mia’s mommy, look she has red hair!” But Mia herself apparently didn’t care for the film at first, according to Kate! “I showed her and she went, ‘this is just rubbish.’ I said, ‘Is it?’” she questioned her daughter, who responded, “It’s not sinking…when is it going to sink?”

Filming was intense…

Cameron and his team shot in Mexico and Halifax, Canada for the film.  While in production in Canada, various members of the production fell ill from a bad batch of chowder. Billy Zane, who played Cal, talked about the now-infamous chowder incident, telling Access at “Titanic’s” Hollywood premiere, “I wasn’t there for the food poisoning, that’s how I think I became a prime subject… but it isn’t true!” he laughed, teasing, “I think Gloria Stuart did it.”

For Leo and Kate, filming was tough. “Well, ‘Titanic’ was one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do as far as a filmmaking experience,” Leo shared with Access in 2000. “It really exhausted me on every possible level,” the actor noted, adding that the production’s hard work reaped results, “Certainly Jim [Cameron] paid a lot of attention to the development of the love story between Kate and I and that movie and that was fantastic, I thought. But there’s this whole other realm of, millions of people doing thousands of different jobs simultaneously. And you have to have somebody, I think, with his sort of commanding type of personality to organize and structure something like that.”

When asked if he wasn’t allowed to have much input on “Titanic,” DiCaprio set the record straight. “No, that’s not necessarily true. Jim was really open to stuff like that.”

After filming, Cameron was exhausted, as he told Access in 1997. “In fact, I can barely hold my head up right now. It’s been rough. I’m going to take some time off. I got married a few months ago. I took one day off to do that. And we’ve managed to squeeze in 6 days of a honeymoon…there’s definitely an expectation that there will be more so you don’t have another on the part of my co-spouse,” he said at the time. In terms of another project, he shared that he didn’t have anything else lined up immediately, “I’m just freewheeling, just coasting. I wanna spend some time with my daughter. I owe her some serious time. You know, like a years’ worth. She’s five years old. But she keeps track. She really keeps track…’Well daddy you weren’t there!’”

For her part, Kate recalled it being not as bad as the press made it out to be, telling Access two years after the film’s success, “It’s all completely positive, because I think the thing was there was a lot of sort of bad press that was generating about ‘Titanic.’ That was really upsetting to me because, you know…it was good. One did stick together, and we did always work towards the same thing and we laughed. We did laugh. I mean Leo, you know, a lot of people don’t know, but he is such a funny guy and one day he’s got to do comedy because he’s just brilliant.” She went on to share examples. “We’d keep each other going with, you know, lots of silly jokes and singing cheesy songs to each other and stuff like that. So now there’s a lot of positivity absolutely, that I still have.”

But “Titanic” almost didn’t happen… 

All of that ambition cost a lot of money and the budget was projected to be too big, but the studio decided to take the risk. “I think that ultimately what it boiled down to was that they understood the risks. They understood that it was going to be a long picture. They understood that it was going to be a film that could not have a sequel, could not have a theme park attraction made out of it. You know, although that might be kind of fun. [laughs] They go in, but they don’t come out! It wasn’t going to have, you know, toys and video games and all that stuff,” Cameron explained in 1997. “So there are limitations placed on it, but ultimately, you know, they read the script and they said, you know what, it’s a good story. And ultimately that’s what a movie is supposed to be.”

But, the budget grew as the project went on, as Cameron also explained, “I think it’s safe to say at the end of the day that we wound up spending a lot more money than we initially intended…We knew what part of the ship we were going to build, what interiors were going to create, the china, the chairs and everything done perfectly. But that was all in the budget. The problem was that’s not what it cost to actually do when we got right down to it and…that was the world of the movie.” He added, “so taking a scene or five scenes out of the script wasn’t going to help very much because you still needed the damn ship…It got tense from that perspective because we were spending a lot more than we intended to.”

It cost so much that Cameron gave up part of his own pay from the film. “I had made a deal with the studio for them to pay me…millions of dollars to direct a film for them. And in order to get them to say OK…I had to give them back some money to sort of offset the budget, which was a little higher than they wanted to spend. And then the budget went up even beyond that,” he recalled. “I just offered and said, ‘Look, you know, you guys are getting hosed here. It’s my fault. I’ll give you the money back. How’s that sound?’ Like all of it…we were in so, so deep at that point. That, you know, we had to come through the other side somehow and stay sane and stay friends and make more movies together and all that. And that just seemed like the right thing to do.”

Beyond the budget, no one could believe James Cameron could direct a romance! “That’s right,” Cameron said, “Everybody keeps coming up to me, ‘Hey, man, that was a love story and it was pretty good. Where’s that coming from? Because you’re such a jerk and, you know, your hard ass reputation is now in jeopardy, you know, and people are going to know you’re a romantic…This is gonna be a hard one to live down,'” he said, adding, “I’ve been doing love stories, just nobody noticed. ‘The Terminator’ done it back in 1984. That’s it. That’s got a great love scene in it, you know, and ‘The Abyss’ was a love story, just had all this other stuff in it and, like aliens and nuclear submarines so people didn’t notice.”

But a short time later, “Titanic” became a record-smashing hit, and thrust Kate and Leo into the spotlight…

While promoting “Avatar: The Way of Water,” Winslet reflected on being thrust into fame around “Titanic.” “I think in terms of extreme success…I mean putting it into perspective and as you say with things like ‘Twilight’ and Daniel Radcliffe and all those other actors who have become so famous so quickly. You actually can’t compare any of those things even to ‘Titanic,’ you can’t. It was a very explosive enormous unique experience and I mean I can certainly look back on it and feel very proud of how I did manage to kind of navigate my way through some fairly stormy seas actually because it was hard, you know, nothing prepares you for that level of fame and that level of exposure,” she shared. “I mean I used to be able to just go and get a pint of milk no problem. That was on a Monday. On Tuesday I suddenly couldn’t do that anymore and it’s like what? And people would say to me, ‘You know, how are you going to cope, you know, your life’s going to change,’ and wow, and I said, ‘What do you, what do you mean my life’s going to change of course it’s not going to change.’ I was almost defiant about it. But you know, it did.”

With that fame, there was lots of negative chatter about Winslet’s body at the time. Kate opened up about that period of her life to Access in 2021, saying, “I don’t know [how I navigated that]. I mean I look back on that time and it was quite hard you know. I will be honest you know. And it’s a strange position to be in. ‘Wow your film is so successful and oh my God aren’t you excited,’ and I’d been thinking, I mean but I didn’t quite know what it meant to how it sort of sat in my life. I mean I certainly wasn’t ready or even prepared to be a famous person like that. I mean nothing can kind of prepare you for those things. It’s quite strange really. And also one doesn’t ever want to sound ungrateful. So there were a few people to kind of really be able to actually talk to about that stuff. But I just have a lovely family and I’ve always felt quite support, very supported and quite grounded. And so I just sort of little by little got through it and didn’t let those things get me down for too long and just move beyond it.”

Winslet followed up “Titanic” with “Hideous Kinky” and stayed out of the spotlight for some time post-1998, explaining, “‘Titanic’ was released and it never seemed to stop…it was sort of hard trying to, you know, understand that and get used to that and being this sort of big famous person and everything.

As for Leo, he saw all the newfound attention at the film’s Tokyo premiere where hundreds of people were awaiting his arrival. “It was cool. It was, it was a little strange, you know, very surreal for sure,” he told Access in 1997. “It was basically the premiere that a lot of people showed up for. I went through the back because there was a lot of people out in front…They make people into heroes really quickly out there, you know?”  

Even Zac Efron fanned out over him! “Leonardo DiCaprio is on the cover of every magazine, there is just some part of you that automatically hates the guy, [like] come on, is he that great?” Efron told Access on the set of “17 Again,” after Efron’s own breakout into heartthrob status. “You see ‘Titanic’ and dang it, he really is [that great].”

And Hollywood legend Olivia de Havilland was smitten too! “I think he’s unique. I think he’s perfectly charming. Don’t tell everybody but I do,” she said to Access in 2006.  

When asked about Leo’s global appeal, Fran Drescher quipped to Access at the Hollywood premiere, “Do birds fly?” Moments later, the star reflected on his new prominence, “Well, you know, you have to adjust to it, I don’t really – oh God what are you supposed to say to something like that? It’s nice,” the actor remarked. “I’ve always been a nerd.”

And “My Heart Will Go On” dominated the airwaves… 

Access was behind the scenes with Céline Dion as she shot the music video for “My Heart Will Go On.”

“I can’t shake your hand because I just did this,” she motioned to her freshly painted nails. Instead, she bowed, “How are you?” In the makeup room she got a lipstick touch up and fixed her hair before speaking to camera:

“Hi here we are on Access Hollywood and you’re backstage with Céline Dion.”

 And Dion never tires of singing the song, as she told Access in 2013, “When you’ve been singing a song for 20 years, 15 years, it’s not like you’re anticipating to sing it tonight so much. But let me tell you something, why people play such a big role when you do live shows.” She painted the scene: “The curtain opens they make you forget that you sang it like three thousand 500 million times before…[the audience] came and like they got married to it or something. They want to hear that song.” The Canadian singer added, “You know what? It’s a good problem to have.” Ana Gasteyer parodied Dion on “SNL” during the “Titanic” height, which the comedienne called “a moment in time,” reflecting to Access, “Back in the old days of “SNL”, there wasn’t really the Internet when I started, so there were just a few cultural moments where every single person on planet Earth was singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ and we just wrote a sketch to that effect.”

‘Titanic’ went around the world, holding red carpets in Tokyo, London and Hollywood… 

Kate would end up taking a sick day for the London premiere, as she explained to Access in 1999, “Unfortunately I was sick at exactly the time that ‘Titanic’ was released in the UK. So I, rather than being at the premiere and in this fabulous dress and all of these lovely things with all my family that were coming as well. I was on a drip in a hospital, sick as a dog, feeling terrible for about five days and sort of couldn’t do anything.”

Years later while promoting “Titanic’s” 3D release, she explained in full: “That of the premiere it was hilarious ’cause I said to all my family ‘look all you all just go, you must still go and go and have a great time.’ So one by one after sort of midnight I get all these visitors I’m lying there with a temperature of a hundred and seven practically you know having an epileptic fit on a drip with one by one my family coming in ‘hello darling,’ slightly smelling of too much champagne and lots of perfume with that kind of premiere things going on, then Jim Cameron came and of course I’m lying there in darkness with you know hospital lights on and exit signs lit up and I’m just thinking, ‘boy this is just this is so surreal’ with Jim Cameron coming in, in the middle of the night to see how I was doing and making, making sure that they were giving me the right medication and taking care of me properly it was pretty amazing actually.”

Billy Zane couldn’t believe it! “I don’t know how bizarre, how much more bizarre from a press standpoint, this, you know, this movie can get.”

For Cameron, the stress was finally starting to come down at the Hollywood premiere where he told Access, “Big night. It’s the end. It’s closure. We’re finally done with this damn thing.”

But not before setting a few awards records… 

“Titanic” went on to be nominated for eight Golden Globes and win four, including Best Picture – Drama, and Best Director for Cameron. That night, Cameron and his then-wife Linda Hamilton celebrated at an afterparty, basking in the glow with Access. “I’m just so happy to see him widely recognized…he’s a general and won the war,” Hamilton said. As for how Cameron felt about the wins, she added, “I don’t think he expected it and he was truly petrified of standing up I mean Jim, I made him work that speech I made him work that speech.” After that work, Cameron let himself relax a bit, telling Access, “I got to see if they have tequila behind the bar here…could use a little right, liquid courage I could have used some before the speech but I had to do that one the hard way.”

When it came time for the Oscars, “Titanic” was nominated for 14, the most ever at the time. Fans were quick to point out that Leo didn’t get a nomination for Best Actor. The future Oscar winner told Access about it in 1998 while promoting “The Man in the Iron Mask,” saying, “I hope to get it someday and, it’s cliché to say, I just do my work. And if it’s something that happens, it’s a great thing,” Leo said at the time. “Of course you’d like to be nominated for something, but you know, I’m a young guy and it’s really fine.”

Despite hopes from fans, Leo did not attend the Oscars that year and caught some flak for it. “I’m just not the type of guy that likes to roll out to red carpet events unless that’s a reason for it, and it was one of those situations where I love the movie…it’s I kind of get nervous by those situations. I’d rather watch it on my TV with my homies, and rewind and fast forward and all that,” he told Access in 2004. He added, “It wasn’t any kind of like a hard-core thing. I just really don’t like going to those things. I just feel really uncomfortable about them all, that’s all. And you know, I didn’t really have that big of a reason to go.” Even at the Oscars in 1997, people thought he might show. Billy Zane joked, “I think he’s going to be air lifted in a little bit later if I’m not mistaken…it’s all the news don’t you know!”

Instead, DiCaprio watched Cameron’s sweep from afar, telling Access in 2000, “He got a lot of accolades that night. I’m sure he’s fine with it. I’m sure he’s in acceptance mode of me not being there.”

“[Leo] was kind of bummed,” Cameron commented at the Elton John Oscars afterparty, “he wanted to kind of support the team, but this glitz thing is just not his scene at all. I said, ‘You know, we have your face in the film, we have your performance. It’s going to go down in history, so God bless you whatever you want to do.’”

The rest of the “Titanic” crew was beaming on the red carpet. “I’m holding hands with Joan [Rivers] and I’m talking to you this is such a Hollywood moment,” Cameron recalled to Access. As much as it was a celebration, the big budget was on everyone’s minds. “What would be a better headline: Titanic Wins you know or Titanic Sunk . . . come on that’s a better headline let’s face it so let’s see what happens,” Cameron said. “We’ve already proved our point…I’ve been contrite about the budget thing we didn’t plan to spend that much money I don’t think, I don’t think any amount of success goes back in time and justifies that but I think we already do feel vindicated by how the film’s been embraced around the world.”

He also admitted that it was time to put “Titanic” behind him. “I’m, well, ready for it to be over you know we got one more night to go better or for worse this is it last stop on the trailer,” he said. As for his confidence in the film’s Oscar chances? “It’s a crapshoot,” Cameron quipped. Then he got nostalgic, adding, “Sometimes it feels like a dream but then sometimes you can remember every painful inch of the way that you had to fight to get each one picture done let alone I’ve made six now you know.” Cameron was already being hailed one of the best directors in history, “no I can’t think in those terms we made a movie that seems to be really affecting people, in 10 years from now we may have all forgotten about it, but I hope not.”

Nominee Gloria Stuart spoke about her glorious Oscar morning. “I got up and I had coffee and I read the morning paper and I answered a lot of telephone calls…so many bouquets arrived it was a wonderful day,” Stuart told Access on the carpet. “A friend of mine said this morning, ‘Gloria you know if you win it’s wonderful and if you don’t it’s still wonderful,’ and it is. The experience is wonderful.”

Winslet, on her end, was also excited to be there, as she told Access about her morning, “Woke up, had a nice breakfast, relaxed around, had hair and makeup done lots of people coming in and out of the hotel room, my mom and dad, my boyfriend, it was really fun . . . It’s been completely extraordinary and I couldn’t have expected…such an honor to be here and a part of this and for me you know being English Jim Cameron didn’t have to cast an English accent role.”

And “Titanic” was clearly on everyone’s mind when it came to fashion, including Linda Hamilton. “I’ve always loved this shade of blue and had I had more time to plan my wedding dress in July it would have been this blue, so this is me just making up,” she said at the time. Stuart wore a diamond akin to “The Heart of the Ocean,” complete with security. “This is it! 20 million dollars…I’d like to take it off but they’re not going to let me,” she told Access with bodyguards behind her. Even Madonna had “Titanic”-inspired jewels! “I got the necklace that was thrown off the boat…I did a lot of swimming,” she teased to Access. Céline Dion joked the same of her large necklace, “I just dive in deep with my dreams and Asprey has done an amazing job with this.”

That night, “Titanic” swept the awards show, including four trophies for Cameron. While giving his speech for Best Director, Cameron quoted the film’s most famous line, “I’m the king of the world.” Critics were quick to point the speech out as egotistical, but Zane defended his director while walking into the Paramount afterparty. “Wasn’t he last week and the one before that and the one before that,” he waged to Access. In 2003 the director reflected on the big night, sharing, “I never made movies ever for the purpose of winning awards and to me ‘Titanic’ was a huge fluke in that regard. I didn’t know I was making a film I thought I was making a movie and I’ll be making movies in the future.”

And Titanic made history tying with “Ben-Hur” for the most Oscar wins. Cameron had worked with Charlie [ < ha] Heston on “True Lies” and recalled telling him, “’We, Chuck, tied with you for 11,’ and he said, ‘I’m glad you didn’t get 12’…a little touchy 40 years later.”

And off-screen, the friendship between Kate and Leo continued… 

After “Titanic,” the two reunited on “Revolutionary Road.” “We kind of grew up in the industry together,” Leo told Access at the film’s premiere in 2008. “I literally read the script and said you know there are some of the most realistic fight scenes I’ve ever read…I know that the fact that I’m going to be able to do this with Kate, my buddy, who trusts me and I, and I trust her implicitly, we’re going to get to push each other’s buttons and go at each other full force with no sympathy, you know, and that was that was the stuff I really looked forward to.” He added that he was also looking forward to a change of scenery with Kate, saying, “Absolutely by no chance would we go on a big boat again!”

At the “Revolutionary Road” junket, Leo also spoke about how Kate brings out a different side to him. “There’s just a great trust working with somebody that’s your very good friend that is also an unbelievable actress,” he explained. “When you work in that kind of situation you’re able to be completely honest with them about what you think about the script or your performance or their performance and you’re not afraid of hurting their feelings and that makes for a great working environment.”

For example, they did dance to “My Heart Will Go On” one night while filming their New England drama. “It was a dance sequence that we had and I think everyone was getting a little tired and um, they wanted to make jokes of us so they put the music on and I think we uh I don’t know what we did but we made everyone laugh. I remember that,” he recalled.

They remained good friends, as Leo explained to Access in 2008, just after the film’s 10-year anniversary. “[“Titanic”] was one of the more difficult films that I’ve ever had to shoot but at the end of the day I developed a great relationship with Kate, we’re still great friends and I’m…proud to be a part of that movie so it’s it seems so part of the past now it’s been over 10 years but I know it’s always going to be a part of my life and my career and I embrace it, I’m honored to be a part of that movie,” he said.

In the end, their chemistry and Cameron’s vision for this epic movie withstood the test of time. Cameron is a filmmaker who dreams it and then does it. “That’s the expensive part, right?” he told Access in 2025 at the “Avatar: Fire and Ash” junket, adding, “Dreams are cheap.” He also reflected on “Titanic’s” cinematic legacy, adding, “There is one interesting thing that changed, which is nobody would ever have released a 3 hour and 15-minute movie before ‘Titanic’ and expected it to be commercially successful. So that opened the door to a new idea, which is that if we care about these characters enough, you know, time flies.”

It certainly does. Nearly 30 years after its release, “Titanic” is available to stream on digital.