CS: Girls love you and have labeled you a sex symbol around the world. How do you feel about that?
Leonardo DiCaprio: I don't mind it, of course, but I haven't deliberately chosen certain films for that reason. I think there's always going to be sort of a new popular face, not only in film, but everywhere. Those things sort of come and go like anything else. The movies I've done, like Romeo and Juliet and the Titanic, have been love stories--so obviously they're going to get a female audience attracted to you from that, but I've chosen them simply because they've been fantastic stories. Who knows, I may do another love story soon. I just want to take the best possible roles in films in the future and that's what really concerns me.
CS: What appealed to you about playing Jack in Titanic?
LDC: I've not liked huge, gigantic blockbuster action films simply because to me, they've lacked content. But when I saw Titanic, it was a completely different situation. I recognized it as having so many themes for humanity and being such an intricate, interesting story that I didn't want to discriminate against it, just because it was big. I'm extremely glad that I did it. I would definitely do it again. Not to say that doing the movie was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life, but when you go through something like that and you look back on it, it's all the more rewarding in the end. But I knew this was not going to be a walk in the park.
CS: But what in particular did you like about your character?
LDC: I've been used to playing characters that have been tortured by some sort of demon, or some sort of internal angst usually. It was an adjustment to play someone like this. It was a lot more challenging that I thought it would ever be. It was a lot harder than I ever imagined it would be. When you play somebody that's so vulnerable you know, it's almost like an open book in a sense. Especially as he meets Rose and opens her whole world and you don't have anything to fall back on--as far as what he's internally going through. He's pretty much just there for her, to help her open up.
CS: Did you follow the script exactly?
LDC: We did a lot of improvisation and I think for the better. Kate and Jim {Cameron} and I did a lot of work to make the characters interesting and to make this realistic. Kate Winslet and I had a great camaraderie throughout the whole movie because we constantly reminded ourselves among the chaos of thousands--and I mean that literally, because when you're doing a movie of this size, Jim also had to pay a lot of attention not only to the intimate story between our characters, but the thousand other people with thousands of different agendas flying around everywhere. You really have to pay a lot of attention to what you started out and intended to do from the beginning--as far as your character is concerned--and keep that consistent, because everything seems to be chaotic.
CS: Much of the film involves special effects. When you finally saw the finished product, what was your reaction?
LDC: I take my hat off to Jim because not only did he have to work on both things simultaneously, he had to take care of everything and make the realist possible love story between two people we could do. I didn't pay much attention to the effects unless I was directly involved. It had something to do with my safety. There's special effects stuff, like green screen shots you have to do, which aren't fun. It's not like you truly feel like at your height as an actor when you stand behind a 'green screen' and have to wait there 30 times as an electronic computerized camera buzzes around you. That's something that we had to do to make the film what it is. And I think it's a great film.
CS: Everybody loves the scene where Jack and Rose are at the bow of the Titanic, catching the wind, symbolizing togetherness and flying towards freedom. What are your feelings about that scene?
LDC: Oh, wow. It looked great. I think with any movie you make something look --as far as technology is concerned--to see if it looked realistic. It looked pretty real to me! I'm not the best judge of it at the same time, but you try your best and I'd say to get the sort of imagery that you want to make the optimum shot that you have for a film, sometimes you can't be there in reality flying through space and zooming past somebody onto a ship that isn't really there. You've got to make it up. I didn't get to see a lot of the stuff they did in the computer room, so when I saw that ship break in half and you see it bounce back on the water and crush people and then the sort of marathon of people trying to survive in the middle of the ocean is breath-taking. That was the great part about seeing this movie for the first time. Not only did I get to watch what we did on screen, character-wise, but you get to be shocked and surprised by all the stuff that people have been doing while you're off on set for seven months.
CS: You spent a long time in the water. Tell us about the scene where you're hanging onto the board with Kate, laying there losing faith and drifting in the icy Atlantic.
LDC: I loved doing that! I mean, the water wasn't really cold, so all of us were acting and getting in that almost kabuki-like white make-up that we put on--like wax in our hair. It was like we were walking around like mummies for two weeks - like Halloween costumes and doing the scene was great. It was Jack's goodbye to Rose and his giving his life to her at that point. It was an extremely important scene for my character and Rose's character as well. It wraps up the whole film and I'm pretty proud of that.
CS: You make your characters so believable. What personal experiences do you draw from?
LDC: Well, first and foremost, I don't necessarily have to experience things in my own personal life
to make them seem real on screen. A lot of roles that I've done in the past I knew nothing about
going into it.
