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Leonardo DiCaprio BYD Auto Make History commercial

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Leonardo DiCaprio BYD Auto Make History commercial (2017)

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Leonardo DiCaprio BYD Auto Make History commercial (2017)

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The copywriting for the advertisement fits with Leonardo's career experience. "You turn from the applauded road to a challenging one" corresponds to the transformation of his image. Meanwhile, the advertisement shows his successful, confidence image.

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Leonardo DiCaprio  BYD Auto Make  History commercial

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Gisele Bündchen on why she broke up with Leonardo DiCaprio, Vogue (2018)

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Gisele Bündchen on why she broke up with Leonardo DiCaprio, Vogue (2018)

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The model has spoken before about the good relationship she had with DiCaprio, confirming the split was amicable with plenty of respect on either end.

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Gisele Bündchen on why she broke up with Leonardo DiCaprio

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The model has opened up about her struggle with mental illness and how it affected her relationship with the actor.

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In 1998, DiCaprio founded the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which is dedicated to the long-term health and wellbeing of all Earth’s inhabitants.

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Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection and welfare of all Earth's inhabitants. Through supporting innovative projects and partnering with leading environmental organizations, the foundation works to find long-term solutions to environmental problems so that future generations can inherit a healthy planet. The foundation has supported over 200 organizations across 50 countries and has helped to preserve over 35 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of coastline.

Supporting efforts to secure a sustainable future for our planet and all of its inhabitants.

SAVE TIGERS NOW

A century ago there were 100,000 Tigers in the wild, today there are as few as 3,200. Join our global campaign with World Wildlife Fund to protect these majestic creatures from extinction.

If we don't take action now, one of the most iconic animals on our planet could be gone in just a few decades. By saving tigers, we can also protect some of our last remaining ancient forests and improve the lives of indigenous communities.
- Leonardo

END THE IVORY TRADE

Elephants are being killed in huge numbers for their tusks. Join us in calling for an end to the ivory trade.

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Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection and welfare of all Earth's inhabitants. Through supporting innovative projects and partnering with leading environmental organizations, the foundation works to find long-term solutions to environmental problems so that future generations can inherit a healthy planet.

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He chaired the 2000 National Earth Day celebration, where he interviewed Clinton and they discussed plans to combat global warming and the environment.

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Mr. DiCaprio. Mr. President, I want to thank you very much for your time. And as you know, I'm neither a politician nor a journalist, but being given the opportunity to sit down with you here and talk about an issue like global warming was an opportunity as a concerned citizen that I couldn't pass up.

So my first question is, global warming is obviously a controversial topic among scientists and politicians. What is your understanding of what the effects of climate change will have on our future if preventative steps aren't taken immediately?

The President. Well, let me, first of all, thank you for your interest in this because I think it's important that we get citizens more involved in it; and secondly say, I don't think it's all that controversial a topic among scientists. There are a few who say that it's not proven, but we know that the hottest years in recorded history, and certainly in the last 600 years, that 9 of the hottest 11 years have occurred in the last decade.

So, the climate is changing, and the globe is warming at an unsustainable rate. And if it is not slowed and ultimately reversed, what will happen is, the polar ice caps will melt more rapidly; sea levels will rise; you will have the danger of flooding in places like the precious Florida Everglades or the sugarcane fields of Louisiana; island nations could literally be buried. The whole climate of the United States, for example, could be changed where you would have more flooding, more heat waves, more storms, more extreme weather events generally.

And then you'll have some public health consequences. For example, we're already seeing in Africa, for example, malaria being found at higher and higher altitudes where it used to be too cool for the mosquitoes.

So there will be a lot of very bad, more dramatic weather events. There will be a shift in the patterns of agricultural production. There will be flooding that will be quite bad, and there will be more public health crises.
Raising Public Awareness
Mr. DiCaprio. While growing up, I always felt that environmental issues were constantly overlooked, and I watched people band together for various causes which seemed to come and go, and it was almost like they were going in and out of style. So how do we take a misunderstood issue like climate change and not only raise awareness but make its prevention an ongoing commitment?

The President. Well, I think we have to make climate change a local and a personal matter in the same way other successful environmental issues are. You know, since I've been here, we've been able to strengthen the quality of our air, strengthen the quality of our water. We've set aside more land for protection and protected forests than virtually any administration in history, except those of the two Roosevelts, because they were things people could understand and identify with, and they knew how to advocate for, and they understood the benefits.

So I think we have to bring this down to practical applications and convince people that they can do something about it, number one; and number two, we have to talk about the first question you asked me-what the consequences of not doing anything.

But there's so much we can do. We started a project here at the White House called the Greening of the White House. Just by changing the lighting in this whole building, we lowered our electric bills by $100,000 a year. Then we put in a different sort of roofing system which kept out more heat and cold. Then we put in a more energy-efficient heating system and water system. We brought more energy-efficient equipment-copiers, computers-all with the Energy Star label, which is a totally voluntary thing the Department of Energy provides.

Now, these are things that businesses all across America could be doing. They're things that homes all across America could be doing. We've worked with the Home Builders to help build lower cost housing that will cut energy use by 50 percent. There's one housing development built in the Inland Empire out in southern California, east of L.A., for lower income working people where the average utility bills are 65 percent lower than in houses of comparable size in the rest of California-just by putting the most modern, thin solar panels on the roofs, by having sensible insulation, by having energyefficient lighting, and by taking new windows that let in more light and keep out more heat and cold.

These things are out there now, and I think when people know there's actually something they can do, as well as what the consequences of our not acting and not pushing Congress and other countries to act are, then I think you'll see action.
Energy-Efficiency Incentives
Mr. DiCaprio. Well, my other question pertaining to that is, if there was a profit incentive there, would that make us pay more attention?

The President. Yes, there should be more of a profit incentive. I mean, right now, for example, if you take the most energy-efficient lighting, it costs you more now, up front, but it lasts so much longer, eventually you turn a profit. And this is true in many processes in all the energy fields.

So what I have proposed to the Congress is that we do basically two things. First of all, we give significant tax breaks to consumers to buy energy-efficient products of all kinds, and that we also give tax breaks for people to manufacture and develop them. And then, that we spend more money on research, like the project we've had that the Vice President headed for new generation vehicles, that we work with the auto companies and the autoworkers union to develop more energy-efficient vehicles and to develop alternative forms of fuel, including biofuels, which could dramatically change the whole future with regard to the greenhouse gases we've put into the atmosphere.

So there's a lot more we can do, and we ought to provide tax incentives to the private sector to help us. But what I want to drive home is that right now it is no longer necessary, in order to grow our economy, to put more greenhouse gases which cause global warming into the atmosphere. You don't have to burn more oil and coal to get richer now-not in America, not anywhere else.
International Cooperation
Mr. DiCaprio. Now, in Kyoto, in the 1997 Global Conference on Climate Change, it asked industrialized countries to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. And when we tried to enforce such protocols in developing countries, they came right back to us and said that the U.S. is responsible for a quarter of the greenhouse gases that are going into the atmosphere. How can we not practice what we preach?

The President. Well first, I think we should practice what we preach. And that's why I think it's so important that the Congress pass the budget that I recommended, that would dramatically increase our investment in developing the kinds of technologies and alternative fuels that would cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

But I also believe that we have a big stake in working with other countries to convince them that they, too, can grow without increasing greenhouse gas emissions. For example, no matter how much we cut emissions in the United States, since this is a global problem, unless we also get China and India and the countries that have the big rain forests to work with us, we're going to be in real trouble.

So, for example, when I was in Bangladesh recently, I announced a debt-for-nature swap that we were going to help finance with them. I signed a bill to do the same thing with the South American rain forest last year. In India, we signed an agreement by which they committed that as they continue to grow and need more power, that they'll have more and more coming from natural and renewable sources in the future, so that we can work together, because it is a global problem.

But we should lead the way. And since we have already so much technology, and since, as I've just explained, just with these minor things we cut the power bills here at the White House by $100,000, and we're going to do it across the Federal Government-if the Federal Government alone will do what we did at the White House, we'll save $750 million a year, and it will be the equivalent in terms of greenhouse gases and climate change of taking 1.7 million cars off the road. We should be doing that.

But we should also work with other countries. I tell other countries, the developing countries, "I'm not asking you to give up your growth; I'm not asking you to give jobs up. I'm asking you to pursue a different pattern of energy use, which will give you more growth, more jobs, and a healthier population over the long run." So I think this really is a win-win issue here. This is not the way it used to be 30, 40 years ago. You can grow an economy and use less energy if you do it right.
Raising Public Awareness
Mr. DiCaprio. Why do you think this issue is so constantly overlooked, and why do you think people don't take it seriously enough? And for you, is it as important as something like health care or education?

The President. Oh, yes, over the long run, it's one of the two or three major issues facing the world over the next 30 years. I think it's because it takes a long time for the climate to change in a way that people feel it, and because it seems sort of abstract now. That's why I think it's important that programs like this are aired and people like you, not politicians or scientific experts but citizens, express their concern.

And then it's important that citizens know that it ought to be an issue; it ought to be a voting issue at election time. And I don't say this in a hateful way. It's just that people need to tell the politicians and the candidates they care about this; they want action. But our citizens need to follow the lead of a lot of our religious groups and other civic groups in actually doing things themselves.

Right now, if the American people knew all the options that are available to them and understood the economics, we could do much better. And of course, if my plan were to pass the Congress and we were to give the tax breaks to consumers and manufacturers of these products and technologies, we could do it even faster.
Energy-Efficiency Incentives
Mr. DiCaprio. Now, the major polluters are obviously the big industries, such as the oil companies, who are one of the most powerful lobbies in the world. How do we convince them to change the way they've been doing business for the last century?

The President. Well, for one thing, oil is a depleting resource. And I think that oil companies and coal companies should be given incentives to become energy companies and to promote energy efficiency, so that the oil they have will last longer and provide them a more steady stream of income and so that they can develop other ways of earning money. They should become-they should think of themselves as energy companies, not oil companies.

And if you look at the record, starting with British Petroleum and its leader, some members of the oil industry are beginning to come over to support action on climate change. Some leaders of the auto industry are beginning to come over and support action on climate change. They understand that this is real and that when these gases get up in the atmosphere, it takes at least 50 years for them to dissipate.

So we need to begin now a disciplined effort, which will be good for our economy. I will say again, this is good for the American economy and good for public health. We need to do this, and if we did it from today until the time you're my age, we'd be a much wealthier country, a much healthier country. And with that kind of effort over that length of time, we could head off this crisis.

Mr. DiCaprio. How do we get power companies to replace their coal plants with cleaner technologies? And why don't we make it so expensive for power companies to keep their old coal plants that they have to invest in cleaner fuels?

The President. Well, I think you can do it in two or three ways. I think, first of all, it's important to have very rigorous clean air standards. And I think it's important also to provide them the tax incentives they need to move as quickly as possible to alternative energy sources.

A lot of the most enlightened utilities in America also see conservation itself as an energy source, PG&E in California, for example. But other utilities have understood that our inefficient patterns of using electricity are pressing them to use more traditional energy and emit more greenhouse gases and warm the climate.

So I think what we should do is to have a system where we finance not only the conversion to alternative energy but also looking at conservation itself as a form of energy. When you save, you do the same amount of work with less energy, and it's like creating more energy in a totally clean way. And I think that we should be financing those things in part with tax breaks from the American Government. And I've pushed for that, and I will continue to do so.
Energy Research
Mr. DiCaprio. Now, you've enacted tax credits for people who want to buy electric and fuel-cell vehicles. What are we doing to encourage oil companies to research alternative fuel technologies like fuel cells?

The President. Well, I want to give tax credits to them, too, to make it easier for them to spend money on that kind of research. And we are doing a lot of the basic research in the Government. The work, for example, we did with the auto companies on developing fuel cells, on developing a dual-fuel electricity and gas engines--

Mr. DiCaprio. A hybrid vehicle.

The President. --hybrid vehicles-the work that we've done to try to help them develop cars that run on electricity, but where the electricity regenerates, the capacity regenerates so they don't have to pull in every 80 miles and juice up the battery again; and a lot of the research we're doing through the Agriculture Department in biofuels-all these things I think are very important. As we do more of that research, the basic research, we then make it more cost effective for the energy companies and for the auto companies to take that basic research and quickly convert it into commercially viable research to develop products.

So I think our research at the national level should increase as well. I think it's very, very important that the Federal Government do that. You know, to get out of the energy context, the Internet basically began as a federally funded research project. So a lot of the things we take for granted today in the private sector began with a heavy investment of basic research from the National Government. And I think we're still at a point where the National Government should be doing a lot of this basic research.

I'll just give you one example. If we could- suppose we get cars that will get 70 miles to the gallon, 80 miles to the gallon. And then suppose they can run on clean biofuels that don't have any greenhouse gas emissions, instead of gasoline. Now, what's the problem today? The problem today is it takes about 7 gallons of gasoline to produce 8 gallons of ethanol or other biofuel. So the researchers today are working on a chemical breakthrough which would permit you to produce 8 gallons of biofuel with 1 gallon of gasoline. If you did that, if you improve the ratio 8 to 1, and you had a car getting 70 miles to the gallon, it would be like getting 500 miles to the gallon of gasoline in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Then the whole future of the world would be different. I mean, this whole issue would be radically different. And then Americans, simply by buying fuel that would be cost effective, could whip this problem.

And we're on the verge of those kinds of breakthroughs, but we need the energy companies to think of themselves as that, not oil and coal but energy. We need the auto companies to keep supporting the work of combating global warming, not pretending it doesn't exist, and many of them are today. And we need more action from ordinary citizens, smaller businesses, and the Government to promote energy conservation and alternative energy sources.

But again I say, this is not a problem that requires big taxes, big regulation, and slow economic growth. It is no longer necessary-in the information economy, with the dramatic scientific breakthroughs already made, we can grow economies faster by conserving energy rather than burning it up. And that's what people don't yet believe. That's the real big debate out there. If we can get people to really believe that we could have a great future using less energy, not more-traditional energy, I mean- then we'd have the battle half won.

And maybe that will come out of this program. Because there's nothing so dangerous to society than being in the grip of a big idea that isn't true anymore. And it is just no longer true that for America or India or China or Latin America or any other place to grow wealthy, they have to put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by burning up more coal and oil. That's just not true anymore. And so we have to show people that that's not true, and show them how they can make a difference, and then keep making these products and technologies available so that it becomes easier and easier and easier to do what is not only the right thing environmentally but the right thing for our long-term economic and public health purposes.
Fuel-Efficient Transportation
Mr. DiCaprio. Many people have said in the past that the American dream was to buy a car and live in the suburbs. But it has created massive problems that have made us more reliant on our cars. Since it is so difficult for us to convince people to use mass transportation, how can we promote hybrid vehicles and convince people to give up their SUV's? For instance, if it only costs $575 a car to make them cleaner, why can't you make it a law, like seatbelts?

The President. Well, I'm not sure that it only costs $575 to make them cleaner in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. But let me say what I think ought to be done. I think-first of all, I think if these SUV's are going to be sustainable over the long run, they also are going to have to become much more fuel-efficient and be able to run on alternative fuels. And I think the American people would pay a little more if they would do that. And the auto companies for the first time have said now that they want to bring in the SUV's and their other less efficient vehicles into this sort of new energy future that we're trying to build.

Secondly, I think that people will take mass transit more if it works better. I've worked very hard to support more investments in mass transit to make it more convenient and faster, including more high-speed rail. And I still believe that as our urban areas become more and more populated and traffic becomes more congested, quite apart from pollution in the air, if we can have clean, efficient, and fast mass transit, people will begin to take it more and more and more because they can do other things; they're not wasting so much time if they're riding the train.

So I'm hopeful that you will see that. I very much hope that we will continue to develop mass transit alternatives, and I believe they will become much more popular with people, especially in the highly populated areas. But we can't stop the development of fuel efficiency because a lot of our people live in rural areas and drive a long way to work, and that's not going to change anytime soon.
Environmental Standards
Mr. DiCaprio. Now, Louisiana is the second largest consumer of fossil fuels and the city most at risk for sea level rise. Can't something be done, like in Atlanta, where the Government withheld highway funds, making it the model city for environmental responsibility?

The President. Yes, we can. But under the law, we can only withhold these highway funds if the air pollution of a given metropolitan area is so high and they haven't done anything about it, anything else about it. Then we can withhold the highway funds. They have to come up with an alternative program, which usually involves mass transit or carpooling or some other means to reduce air pollution, and in this case, also to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And I'm sorry to say I don't know exactly the answer to your question, but it may be that for other reasons, New Orleans is in full compliance with the Federal laws on air pollution. I'll just have to look and see.

But we've tried to do that in more than one other place, to use the obligation of a city, a big metropolitan area to have clean air to promote the development of alternative energy technologies and alternative travel patterns. And I do think that environmental standards can be used that way. In other words, instead of telling people we're going to shut you down, or imposing big, heavy, complicated regulations, say, "Here's the standard; if you want the money, meet the standard." And then, in Atlanta, they figured out something to do that was very good for the environment, and they got their money.
Citizen Involvement
Mr. DiCaprio. Now, I'm sure you've heard so many reports from scientists and politicians and citizens. What do you think the best course for American citizens is, within the next 20 years, as far as helping the environment is concerned?

The President. Well, the biggest global problem by far on the environment is global warming. The biggest problem in many developing countries right now is safe water. We still have huge numbers of children dying from diarrhea and other related diseases and problems because they don't have safe water. And there are local air pollution problems that are horrible in various places.

But internationally, the biggest problem is global warming. And I think the most important thing we can do is, every citizen must first understand that he or she can do something about this, and it won't bankrupt them. They should have their homes, their cars, their businesses- everything they do should be oriented toward energy efficiency and alternative energy technologies. And then they should make this one of the issues that has to be discussed by public officials running for office at every level. This has to become not just an issue that we talk about once a year on Earth Day but an issue that is debated along with health care and education and national security and other issues at every election.

You know, I was fortunate when I asked Vice President Gore to join me in 1992 that he had written a book on this, that he was interested in it. He talked to me about it. And so we just, on our own initiative, have done a lot of these things. But we could have had a whole environmental agenda and not dealt with this really very much. And then we had Kyoto, which we strongly supported, the Kyoto Protocol. But this needs to become an issue for every public official. It needs to become a matter of citizen debate.

So I think citizen action, and then citizens as voters turning it into a political issue, in the very finest sense-those are the things that I think need to be done right now and for the next several years to get America on the right track.

Mr. DiCaprio. Do you think we can eventually become a role model?

The President. Absolutely. We should become a role model because, just as we've led the world in information technology with the development of the Internet and digital technology of all kinds, we have the technology here. And there's no excuse for not implementing it comprehensively and quickly in every American community. And there's no excuse for not making it available at an affordable price to every American family.

So if we take this on the way we did the Industrial Revolution, the way we did the information technology revolution, there will be an energy revolution in the 21st century that will save the planet and actually increase health and wealth. That will be one-I predict to you that will be one of the great stories of the 21st century, that there was a dramatic revolution in work caused by a change in the source of energy, in the level of conservation, and in the availability of technologies that just weren't there before.

Mr. DiCaprio. I hope so.

Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

The President. Thank you.

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Interview With Leonardo DiCaprio for ABC News' "Planet Earth 2000"

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Mr. DiCaprio. Mr. President, I want to thank you very much for your time. And as you know, I'm neither a politician nor a journalist, but being given the opportunity to sit down with you here and talk about an issue like global warming was an opportunity as a concerned citizen that I couldn't pass up.

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Leo, Prince of the City, New York Magazine (1998)

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Leo, Prince of the City, New York Magazine (1998)

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As a young man, Leo used to go to bars and parties, which made his reputation as a bad boy become widespread.

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Hi Leonardo! You just seem to drain all my worries out of me when I'm watching one of your movies. You are a hell of a better actor than Brad Pitt and all those other shitty actors that some girls love to death. All I want to say before I sign off is that I don't think you are gay or bi and when some of my friends say they don't like you I am not ashamed to say that I am deeply in love with you. (Oh, and by the way, I'm a Calvin Kline sic model and I'm 21 years old!)
- posted on the "Leonardo DiCaprio Is a Hot Babe!" Website, May 31

T he furtive typing of teens in the Heartland is only the rawest expression of the global passion focused on the 23-year-old Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio (named after Da Vinci, and with a Mona Lisa smile). What can Leo's life be like at the center of this raging obsession? I went looking for Leo to find out - on the town in New York, where he can still be found most nights, as always, having a hell of a time.

I didn't find Leo at Jet 19, reportedly one of his hangouts, but I did meet a stockbroker named Ted who said he'd seen Leo at the Bubble Lounge recently. "I literally bumped into him," said Ted, laughing modestly. "I made a big impression on him."

Leo is six feet tall, according to the best-selling Leonardo DiCaprio, Modern-Day Romeo - Ted is five foot three. But he was wearing a very expensive suit. "I know if he saw me again, he'd remember me," he said, convinced. "I was like, 'Yo, Leo, dude, whassup?' And he was, like, sooo down-to-earth. We talked about chicks, y'know? He was just a regular guy, sipping Stoli-and-soda. Talking about chicks." Again he gave a dry little laugh.

At Shine, the hot new club on West Broadway - so hot, Leo goes there - I met a slinky 40-year-old woman in false eyelashes who was dancing with a 24-year-old man. She told me, "I will have him, one day. I will see him here, and he will make eye contact with me, and he will know that we were meant to be together for a brief affair. Because he is so sensitive."

The actress Susan Sarandon, who lives in New York, recently pushed her way through hordes of Leomaniacs at the premiere of The Man in the Iron Mask to get an audience with DiCaprio for her teenage daughter, Eva, and seven of her closest school friends. "He was totally adorable," said Sarandon. "I humiliated myself."

Leo's been making the scene in New York for so long, he was already becoming a sort of tourist attraction, like South Street Seaport; but it was never anything like it is now. "I remember him and Juliette Lewis outside a Saturday Night Live party at Rockefeller Center a few years ago, begging the clipboard troll-ettes, 'Come on, please let us in,' " gossip columnist Anita Sarko says. "Even at the Basketball Diaries party at the Hard Rock Cafe, no one was paying much attention to him."

But then came the billion-dollar-grossing movie, the 500 Leo Websites, the plethora of hype and the attentions of the rich and powerful ("Leonardo DiCaprio ... is an androgynous wimp," Senator John McCain grumbled recently), and Leo turned into "Leo." Now, venturing out at night with him feels like climbing onto the set of the Jerry Springer Show, says one of his close friends. "When he goes to a club, people start screaming and jumping over the security guards and elbowing and pushing to get near him."

And that's not just the civilians. "The models are all over him," says Jeffrey Jah, director of the club Life. "He's got rock stars, Puff Daddy, Donald Trump, going over to his table to sit with him. Leo just comes in to hang out with his friends."

Jah adds, "They never act up in here."
The Posse
"T hey" are the fun-lovin' guys you always see Leo around with. Even before there was Leomania, Leo always traveled with his pack of devotees, known in Hollywood circles as "The Pussy Posse." "They're all about seeing the girls," says a magazine photographer in New York who once had to sneak Leo and his boys, then the uninvited, into a Victoria's Secret event.

The group's core members constitute a frat house of young men, some of whom are actually famous, like Leo. There's Lukas Haas, who has not yet become Leo, and Tobey Maguire - the pensive youth in The Ice Storm - who is, perhaps, waiting to. There's Harmony Korine, the Gummo boy auteur, and David Blaine, the levitating magician, who was recently spotted zipping around town on his new motorcycle with Leo - they hit Moomba, Chaos, Veruka, and NV, where Mariah Carey had to wait in line to get a meeting. "I have fun with him, that's for sure," Leo said of Blaine two years ago when I was doing a story on the magician. "He'll do some pretty fucking crazy things. He's like a monkey with electrodes stuck to his head!"

And then there are the other guys in Leo's pack, who make up a kind of former-child-actor brigade: There's Jay Ferguson, once Burt Reynolds's wisecracking son on Evening Shade; Josh Miller, who played Keanu Reeves's little brother in River's Edge but never became Keanu Reeves; Ethan Suplee, who appeared briefly in Chasing Amy; Kevin Connelly, who has appeared on the WB; Scott Bloom, another aspiring actor; Justin Herwick, with whom Leo almost got himself killed over the California desert in 1996, when his parachute failed to open (his instructor released an emergency cord). The Leo men seem to like to play rough. "I like to do things that scare me," said DiCaprio.

An adjunct member of the pack is the heavy-haired Sara Gilbert of Roseanne, who was starring in Poison Ivy when Leo was just "Guy #1" in the script. "If they're a new Rat Pack, she's the Shirley MacLaine figure," says a young actor who's hung out with the crowd in L.A. "A lot of them have known each other a long time; they started out as child stars together." (That was back in Leo's Growing Pains days, during which "he was becoming a bit of a misfit in his classes," the best-selling Leonardo DiCaprio, Romantic Hero reportsgently. "Leonardo alarmed his teachers ... when he drew a swastika on his head as part of his improvised imitation of mass murderer Charles Manson.")

The posse "used to see each other at auditions all the time," says their young actor friend, "and a little competition rose up between them." In fact, Haas lost out twice to DiCaprio for plum roles - in This Boy's Life and What's Eating Gilbert Grape, for which DiCaprio won a Best Supporting Actor nomination. ("Why should I want to be him?" Haas snapped to Texas Monthly in 1996.)

"They were always betting on who would blow up first," says the actor friend. "Tobey was into more of a Tom Hanks track. Leo was modeling his career after Nicholson and De Niro." ("Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act," DiCaprio said in the best-selling Leonardo DiCaprio Album, which also recounts an early Leo memory - killing a pigeon - as well as the time his father, George, a "bohemian" comic-book trader, urged his son to go off and lose his virginity. Leo, then 6, declined.)

As the years went by, however, Leo was always the one getting the best parts, the best reviews, the most heat in the teen magazines. And now this. "The Titanic stuff has caused this big identity crisis. Some of them have completely lost their careers," the young actor says. "All they do now is hang out with Leo. If Leo wants to go to Paris, it's let's go to Paris. Las Vegas? No problem." DiCaprio was heard exclaiming to his table at Tomoe on Oscar night, "Let's rent a plane! I want to go to India!" "The people closest to him have Leomania worse than anyone," the actor says.

"They're like, 'How come he's getting all the attention and no one's paying attention to me?' " says another member of the group who's observed their "sibling rivalry" - which he says Leomania has made chronic. "They want to be with Leo like 24-7."

Some posse members even accompany DiCaprio on movie sets. In New York, they act as unofficial bodyguards, although it's unclear sometimes whether this is for his benefit or for theirs. "They get off on protecting him - they're always ready to start yelling and swinging," grouses paparazzo John Barrett, who admits to having chased Leo around town on several occasions. "They were rushing me outside Moomba" on the night of James Toback's after-party for the premiere of Two Girls and a Guy, says the photographer, sighing, "Here I am at my age dealing with a pack of little brats like that."

The posse even carries Leo's cash. Earlier this year, when DiCaprio rented a house in South Beach, "he trusted his entourage of friends to deal with his expenses, not carrying any money himself," confides The Leonardo DiCaprio Album. "According to his pal Ethan Suplee, 'Leo's cheap... . He'll look for a place in the street to park rather than use valet parking.'"

"I'm the cheapest bastard in the world," the ever-frank DiCaprio has said. "You never know, I may go bankrupt, or lose my career, or have a Hugh Grant situation."
Leo Takes New York
Leo discovered New York in 1994, when he came here to shoot The Basketball Diaries. In New York, "you could sit in a corner all day and probably have a more fulfilling time than traveling all over L.A. and seeing all the sights," said DiCaprio. How true. But Leo hardly sat watching the city pass him by; he jumped right in, and the press followed, naturally. "He hits Manhattan clubs ... and brawls with the locals," said Rolling Stone. "He seldom sleeps, so intense is his partying," Liz Smith wrote.

"We don't have gossip columns in L.A. watching everybody's every move," complains DiCaprio's publicist, Cindy Guagenti. "If people want to know something, they call the publicist."

"He started acting like an idiot," says one highly placed New York publicist (who wouldn't allow me to use her name because, she says, "everyone fears his power" - as if Leo were Louis XIV, whom he recently played). "He made a joke out of it, going to everything all over the place. He was like Sylvia Miles, except young and beautiful and talented."

"New York is like Leo's playground, his Disneyland," says an aspiring director who says he's frequented strip joints with Leo's posse in L.A. "They used to set off stink bombs at Sky Bar. But Leo's not going to act up out here now. Anyone in the of course, movie industry could be sitting at the next table. No one in the industry cares what he does in New York."

"They're kids. They act like kids," the redheaded hostess at Moomba told me, with a curling little frown. At Spy, where Leo has become what Liza once was to Studio 54, or Henny Youngman was to the Carnegie Deli, the French bartender griped, "He does not teep! He gets his friends go to the bar for his drinks. He was in here with Julie Delpy - I could not understand it. She's a very nice girl - French. He is cheap."

Leo worries about his image: "I don't want to be thought of as a party animal," he has said. Most of what gets reported about him hardly rates as Rat Pack behavior, however; it's more like Romper Room (which he appeared on at the age of 5). This March, Leo and the posse reportedly bombarded paparazzi with grapes from upstairs at the Mercer Hotel. ("That doesn't sound like Leonardo," Guagenti told the Daily News. "Does it?" asked the paper.) And Leo was spotted throwing litter off the Brooklyn Promenade onto cars traveling below on the BQE ("before speeding away in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes," said the New York Post). In April, Leo was seen sporting a shiner. "He got it horsing around with his friends," said a beleaguered-sounding Guagenti.

But DiCaprio's reputation as a true bad boy has become widespread enough for it to be made a joke of: Two weeks ago at the MTV Movie Awards, DiCaprio accepted his honor for Best Male Performance by video; the spoof that followed featured a crew swaddled in bandages, all saying DiCaprio had freaked out and assaulted them. Uh, ha, ha. And DiCaprio has said that in Celebrity, the next Woody Allen movie (where art always mocks life), he plays "a cocky young Hollywood actor, the stereotype of what a disgusting young actor should be."

The currently suppressed indie film Don's Plum - originally called Saturday Night Club - may provide an inadvertent glimpse behind the curtain shrouding the secret society of Leo and his friends, mostly because it was made and largely ad-libbed by Leo and his friends. The characters "sit around, smoke, talk, say 'bro' a lot, insult the waitress, try to have sex with girls in the back room, fight," says one person who has seen it.

Don's Plum was directed by former posse member R. D. Robb - also a former child actor - who has recently been "expelled" from the group, according to someone still inside it, for attempting to spin the film's straw into the Leo gold of a commercial release. DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, who in 1995 put up a scant amount of money to get the movie made, said no way.

Maguire, according to the $10 million lawsuit filed in L.A. Superior Court in April by David Stutman, the film's producer, became concerned that "improvisational comments he had made during the Film revealed personal experiences or tendencies that would undermine his public image," and so he leaned on his "longtime friend," Leo, to block it, although DiCaprio allegedly didn't much care whether anybody saw it or not. At one screening, DiCaprio said he " 'really, really liked the film,'" says Stutman's suit. "He jumped out of his seat several times, laughing, clapping, and high-fiving his friends."

"Do you girls masturbate at all?" Leo asks in one scene. "Stop looking at me like that - I'll fucking throw a bottle at your face, you goddamn whore."

The film was pulled from Sundance. Miramax is no longer interested in investing. Maguire and DiCaprio's "campaign" against the movie makes "potential buyers, distributors and others afraid to offend DiCaprio," say court papers.
Leo and the Ladies
"The pussy posse" didn't get its name for nothing. "When you're my age," DiCaprio says in The Leonardo DiCaprio Album, " your hormones are just kicking in and there's not much besides sex on your mind."

The gossip mill has produced a Cannonball Run of beauties supposedly "linked" to Leo: Alicia Silverstone, Juliette Lewis, Kate Moss, Kate Winslet (who said, "To me he's just smelly, farty Leo"), Demi Moore (Bruce was in Delaware shooting a movie), Claire Danes (who called him "immature"), Bridget Hall (who told me, "Nothing happened," refuting the Globe, which quoted her as saying, "He was lousy in bed. The sex was bad"), Sharon Stone (Leo said, of their screen kiss, "I was expecting a little more from ol' Sharon, y'know? Actually, she hurt my lip").

And yet DiCaprio still can't seem to shake the rumor he's less than interested in the company of women. "If I want to go to a party with a few male friends, it doesn't mean I'm gay!" Leo has said. Totally, dude. After all, Sinatra hung out with Don Rickles, but that doesn't mean he was having sex with him, either. "Leo is not gay," laughs still another young L.A. actor who has hung out with his crew. "Leo's all about girls."

But no wonder if Leo's had it with all the young ladies trying to get their names in bold print next to his. Take the case of Vanessa Haydon, the 20-year-old blonde Wilhelmina model and New York native who caused a mini-sensation after she was seen nuzzling Leo at that premiere party at Moomba for James Toback's Two Girls and a Guy, in May.

Star, May 26 (breathless): "Leonardo DiCaprio has fallen hard for a stunning young model - and pals say this time it's love. The superstar is so smitten with blonde beauty Vanessa Haydon that he's now a one-woman man."

"He never dated her," Cindy Guagenti says flatly. At least one person saw DiCaprio walk out of an after-party for a Tony Shafrazi Gallery opening at BondSt. just as Haydon was striking up a conversation with a gossip columnist about how happy Leo was to finally be with someone as "down to earth" as she.

"Vanessa played the media really well," says a young man who has known Haydon since they were going to "teenyboppers" (or teen nightclub events) together. "Now she's all dolled up and ladylike and shit, but she used to be this hard-rock in leather and baggy jeans. She was a total gangster bitch."

"She was an ill thug," says a girl who attended the Dwight School with Haydon. "She went out with this Latin King for like three years."

In her yearbook, Haydon was voted Most Likely to Wind Up on Ricki Lake. Instead, she made it into "Page Six," which reported in May that her handlers were charging Sydney newspapers $15,000 for advance publicity stills while Haydon was Down Under shooting the cover of Australian Harper's Bazaar. "Vanessa Haydon got game," says another former schoolmate.

But no matter. Leo's supposedly on to an 18-year-old Russian modelette from Moscow, Alyssa Sourovova; or at least he was for a night - again, at Moomba. Later that same week, however, he was with David Blaine at Ten's, the strip club on West 21st Street. I just missed them, but a dancer whispered hotly in my ear: "He comes in here with all his friends and sits back like the Mack Daddy - he doesn't even tip!"

At Life, where I also did not find Leo, I talked to a drag queen named Meeka who looked exactly like Naomi Campbell (with whom Leo also reportedly had a dalliance this year). "He's cute! He's right now!" Meeka shouted thoughtfully above the theme to Titanic, which had been set to a pounding disco beat. "When all the 17-year-olds become 22-year-olds, he'll have faded, but right now, he's right now. "

"And that's," she added, "what it's all about."

One night when I got home after looking for Leo, there was a message on my answering machine. A group of young guys - they all sounded drunk - were laughing and cutting up in the background. It was kind of strange. The speaker was telling me that if I wanted an interview with him, I'd have to "make a deal" along the lines of doing something for him that Monica did for Bill. "Then maybe we'll talk!" he laughed.

I'd been trying to get in touch with Leo.

But nah, I thought; it couldn't be Leo.
Leo and the Law
It was the kind of night the posse should love: It was all about them - or, that is, Leo. The premiere of The Man in the Iron Mask was showing at the Ziegfeld Theater; Leo entered to the tearful wailing and undergarment-pelting of hundreds of teenage girls. The after-party at the New York Public Library was attended by everyone who was anyone - but even most of them couldn't get upstairs into the extra-exclusive chamber where Leo and some of his entourage, which included Jay Ferguson and David Blaine that night, puffed on imported cigars. They'd just been down to Cuba.

Elizabeth Berkley made it into the upstairs party on the invitation of an L.A. publicist named Karen Tenzer, a partner in the firm Michaels, Wolf and Tenzer, which counts among its clients Gabriel Byrne, who co-starred in Iron Mask as Leo's Musketeer. Not long after Berkley, best known for her flashy role in Showgirls, started mingling, Tenzer took her aside. "She said, 'Jay Ferguson and Leo are going crazy for you, and they want you to come to Elaine's after this - without Roger,'" says Berkley, whose hapless boyfriend, actor-director-whatever Roger Wilson (he starred in Porky's I and II), was nearby, getting some food.

Berkley asked, was this some kind of joke? Tenzer, she says, knew she lived with Wilson here in New York; the couple had recently had dinner with Tenzer and Byrne while in Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. "'They're going nuts for you,'" Berkley says Tenzer laughed.

Berkley had also seen DiCaprio and Ferguson around for years. When DiCaprio was on Growing Pains and Ferguson on Evening Shade, Berkley was a Saved by the Bell cutie. "The last time I saw Jay, I was probably 17," says Berkley. "In L.A., you just see everybody around at events and auditions." However, she declined what seemed a rather odd request. Berkley says, "I told Karen I'm in love with Roger."

But that, apparently, wasn't the end of it. "The next morning on my voice mail," says Berkley, "there was a message from Jay, saying, 'Hey, baby, Karen gave me your number, we're going to dinner later, we want you to come.'" Throughout the day, Berkley says, she also received around seven messages from Tenzer, which she ignored, until finally, around midnight, there was one from Tenzer's assistant saying "Karen needs you immediately," giving Tenzer's cell-phone number, which she dialed.

"The first thing Karen said was, 'Why didn't you call Jay back?'" says Berkley, with quiet outrage. "She said, 'Your presence is requested here.' Her tone was very impatient. And I said, 'What, are you trying to deliver me to these guys, Karen?' And she said, 'Well, you know.'"

"Really upset," Berkley went to Wilson, who was in their living room watching sports. Hearing what had gone on, Wilson (who's from Brooklyn) asked for Tenzer's cell number and got Jay Ferguson on the phone. "I said, 'Look, Jay,'" says Wilson, "'I know you guys are having a great time and the town is your apple - but not this part of town. I don't know how this got started, but I'm just asking you please not to call my home again, and Elizabeth has asked please that you not call her again... . Okay?'"

"And then I heard a lot of profanity," says Berkley.

"There was a two-second pause," Wilson says, "and then it's, 'Fuck you, you fuckin' faggot, fuckin' motherfucker, we'll call whoever we want and if you don't fuckin' like it, why don't you come down here and tell us to our face?'"

"Thus," Wilson says with a sigh, "I put on my shoes and went to the Morgans hotel," where Leo and friends were dining at the restaurant Asia de Cuba.

The back table was full: DiCaprio was there (he had nine rooms booked at the hotel), as were Ferguson, Tenzer, Julia Ormond, Byrne, and about eight other posse members (no David Blaine that night). At the appearance of Wilson, the table fell silent. Wilson demanded of Tenzer why she was calling Berkley so late. "And then Jay Ferguson jumps up and says, 'I'm the one who called you, fuckface, and it's time for you and me to go outside,' " says Wilson. (Ferguson did not return phone calls from New York.)

Wilson went. Ferguson went. And then, according to a sworn statement reportedly given to police by the restaurant's chief of security (who, three weeks later, was no longer employed there), DiCaprio said to the others at the table: "Let's go kick his ass." And the rest of the table, minus Byrne and Ormond, followed.

Wilson claims two hotel security guards stood on either side of DiCaprio, who was smoking a cigarette, as he and Ferguson squared off on the sidewalk outside the entrance. "I'm facing Jay Ferguson, two feet in front of me," says Wilson. "The other guys are yelling at me, 'Fuck you, faggot! Go home, you fuckin' wimp, you're pathetic.' You know, all this."

Tenzer was also outside, according to Wilson, attempting to make peace; she held up her cell phone, saying, "I think this is all my fault. I can explain." Just then, as Wilson was momentarily distracted, someone - not Ferguson - punched him in the Adam's apple. He doubled over. And suddenly, the posse "went crazy, saying, 'Oh, no, oh, no, this can't happen!' And they jumped on the guy and threw him back in the hotel. They were protecting him," says Wilson. "And I never saw the kid again."

Wilson's larynx was damaged. His attacker still hasn't been identified. For now, the D.A.'s office isn't talking about the case, but Roger Wilson "was definitely assaulted," says Detective George Wich of the 6th Precinct, who's heading the investigation. "We're taking it seriously."

Karen Tenzer, contacted at her office in L.A., denied any involvement in the curious scenario. "I was just having dinner," she said. "Leonardo DiCaprio is not my client." "I can't answer whether any of Leo's friends called Elizabeth," Cindy Guagenti told me; elsewhere, Guagenti has said, "Leo's friend did call Elizabeth, but it was to invite her to dinner with them."

"That girl" - meaning Berkley - one of Leo's friends says lightly, "would have come in a second if we'd wanted her to. Any girl would."

Faux Leo

W as there something about being Leo that attracted trouble? Do these sorts of things just happen to you if you're the most sought-after young man in the world?

I was at Ñ on Crosby Street, not looking for Leo, when I thought I saw him. I jumped out of my chair. "That guy doesn't look like Leo," said my friend Greg, pushing me down. "Maybe Leonardo Smith."

It turned out the young man's name was Troy Allen, and he was a recruit from Detroit for a large brokerage firm. He was the same age and height as Leo, had the same paleness, the same loose-limbed, lanky look. The fires of Leomania licked at my brain. "How'd you like to be Leo for a night?" I asked him.

"Well, sure!" he said.

My worst fear for this experiment was that nothing would happen, and I'd have wasted everyone's time on a harebrained scheme. Quite the opposite occurred, which turned out to be much scarier.

I brought along a photographer (Catherine McGann) and a bodyguard (a large fellow who goes by "Brick"), and I rented a limo, white stretch, from the Yellow Pages. It was all at the last minute, and the car was not exactly prime; it looked like the limo of losers.

The driver, Raymond, had a long shiny ponytail under his shiny black cap and a Pancho Villa mustache. He was told we were picking up "Leo," to which he stammered, "Oh! I will drive very carefully!"

It was a Friday night. We picked "Leo" up around ten. I'd told him to wear sunglasses. "Welcome to my limousine!" Raymond said nervously, throwing open the back door.

"Gee, thanks!" Troy said.

Three of Troy's friends - Kara, Lee Ann, and Steve - came along for the ride. They were all in their early twenties, all in marketing and the financial sector, all quite giddy at being part of the stunt. Troy confessed he had never been in a limousine before.

"How does it feel to be so famous?" I asked him.

"It's awesome!" he said, fiddling with the power windows.

He was taking to his role with alacrity. "What's Kate Moss like?" I probed.

"She's gorgeous," said Troy. "And she's a really nice person."

Our first stop was the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. There was a small crowd on the sidewalk surrounding a woman holding a large Gila monster on her shoulder - you could touch it for a fee. When the limo pulled up, Catherine jumped out, snapping pictures of "Leo" emerging; the onlookers rushed over, leaving the Gila monster in the dust.

"Who's that?" they demanded. "Out the way!" ordered Brick.

Some of them zoomed after us into the store, where "Leo" pretended to shop for CDs; it was a bit difficult for him to concentrate, however, as a gaggle of teenage girls and so-excited-they-could-burst tourists were shamelessly scrutinizing his every move. Security guards were suddenly appearing, hissing at one another on walkie-talkies. "Gosh," Troy whispered, growing paler, "they really think I'm him! Let's get outta here!"

Back outside, as we moved down the street, the number of fans trailing us had tripled; some were running around in front of "Leo" taking pictures of him with disposable cameras and then dashing away, as if they had gotten away with something. Brick pretended to order back the limo driver on a cell phone. "Where's the limo at?" he barked. "We can't leave Leo out here on the street!"

While Raymond was circling the block - perhaps nervous about his precious cargo - he had gotten into an accident; a tow truck had hit the limousine. We were now driving "Leo" around in a dented limo. "Once you go down with the Titanic, " "Leo" said magnanimously, "you can deal with just about anything."

But "Leo" was getting antsy; he decided he had to have something to eat. "I'm hungry!" he moaned, at which we all jumped, making suggestions. After all, he was the star. "I wanna go to Planet Hollywood!" he said.

Troy was not aware of it, but the real Leo has been talking to the owners of the wildly popular snack joint (Schwarzenegger, Bruce and Demi, et al.) about becoming a shareholder. I didn't think this would be a problem; in fact, I thought it might be a good cover for why "Leo" would have nothing better to do on a Friday night than go check out the movie-star tchotchkes at Planet Hollywood. I called ahead: "We're coming with Leo," I said.

"Oh, okay!" said the maître d', Kathy, her voice taking on a solicitous tone. Would Leo be comfortable in the main dining room - or would he like them to set up the function room? "Leo" said to tell her he wanted to eat with everybody else, just like "regular people. Just because I'm a star, I don't think I'm better than anybody," Troy said sincerely.

Outside Planet Hollywood, a wait staff of about seven was waiting for us on the sidewalk. "They look like they should be holding up swords," Lee Ann observed. We all peered out the windows timorously. "Uh, this looks serious," Troy said.

Raymond flung opened the door. "Come on, Leo!" Brick boomed. Catherine started snapping pictures. "Leo" climbed out, baseball hat pulled down low.

They'd arranged for us to enter through a side door. Maître d' Kathy and Brett, the night manager, were following along behind us, peppering me with questions about Leo's visit. "Well, frankly, I was surprised he wanted to eat at Planet Hollywood," I said fishily. "Well, frankly, so were we," Kathy said.

As soon as we were in the main dining room - packed with patrons devouring mounds of fried food - heads began swiveling around; people were talking through their hands, mouthing "Lee-Oh," eyes wide, mouths full. Waiters from all over the restaurant were rushing into the room to get a look. "They on him," whispered Brick.

It all felt very dicey. I began to panic. "What do we do?"

"Talk to me. I'm the star!" hissed "Leo."

We sat down. I pretended to conduct an interview. "Uh, so you're thinking about becoming a shareholder of Planet Hollywood?" I asked.

"I don't want to disclose anything right now," muttered "Leo," sinking down behind his menu.

We had sent Kara and Lee Ann to the front to take the temperature (where, little did we know, Leo's tuxedo from Titanic is hanging in a large glass case; apparently, his legs are several inches shorter than Troy's). Later on, they told us that just then, a waiter passed by them announcing: "You girls are gonna pass out in a few seconds - I'm gonna pass out, too!"

On our side, the room had become strangely loud and animated, everyone showing off the way people do when they feel they're in the presence of someone known. "They on him," Brick said again, in disbelief.

"Can I get a picture?" said a portly woman who had appeared beside our table, flashing us with a disposable camera before we could answer.

A sweet-sixteen birthday party was already in progress. Long Island girls in short, sleeveless dresses and chunky heels were whipping out cell phones, mouthing "Lee-Oh!" excitedly into receivers.

Two 12-year-old girls in jeans came right up to us, arms crossed, faces drenched with disgust. "That's not Leo!" one said, turning on her heel.

But others weren't sure; a line of maidens was now circling the room like little Nerf sharks, in Gap shirts.

Brett was back. "Can you come with me?" he asked, in a high, pinched voice. Uh-oh, I thought; I telegraphed alarm to my tablemates, but they were transfixed by the weird swelling of the room. "Don't let them tear my hair out or anything," Troy was imploring Brick.

Brett and Kathy led me to an empty back office, where I expected to be dipped in batter and fried.

Instead, I was handed a telephone. Patty Caruso, the publicist of Planet Hollywood, had been called on Long Island (it was midnight). "How long is he going to be there?" she asked urgently. "Because I know Keith Barish" - the principal owner of Planet Hollywood - "will want to come down and meet with him. Would that be all right? He could be there in fifteen minutes - "

"Uh, I'll have to ask," I said, handing back the phone.

"We have to go," I told our party through clenched teeth.

Things were getting out of control. We got up. Brick had to wave people out of the way. "Leo just wanted to come down here and have a few drinks, get something to eat," he was shouting, "and look what y'all did! Y'all fucked up! We outta here! Come on, Leo, let's go!"

"Just let him know Eric took care of him," the waiter informed me politely.

We ran out to the limo. People were running after us, smashing their faces against the windows after "Leo" climbed in. "It's her 16th birthday; can't we get a picture?" People were taking pictures - of the car.

Back inside the car, Troy said, bewildered, "I'm a superstar. I can't believe what they did to me."

We took off into the night. The limo phone rang. Brick informed "Leo" that Raymond wanted his autograph.

Troy took off his sunglasses; he looked dazed. "Being in that situation is really stressful," he said unhappily. "I don't like being Leo anymore."

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Hi Leonardo! You just seem to drain all my worries out of me when I'm watching one of your movies. You are a hell of a better actor than Brad Pitt and all those other shitty actors that some girls love to death.

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Leonardo DiCaprio’s ’25th birthday rule’ strikes again after Camila Morrone breakup

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Leonardo DiCaprio’s ’25th birthday rule’ strikes again after Camila Morrone breakup

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Some people have taken Leonardo's habit of breaking up with women before they turn 26 as a punchline, or just his amusing quirk. This has prevented his public image from being damaged by the gossip.

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Leonardo DiCaprio's love life embodies that classic line from Matthew McConaughey's sleazebag character in Dazed and Confused: "I get older, they stay the same age."

Now approaching 50, DiCaprio is notorious for dating much-younger women-invariably under the age of 25. So when he broke up with his girlfriend Camila Morrone two months after her 25th birthday, people inevitably took notice.

DiCaprio's taste in women is so consistent that it became the subject of a viral graph in 2019. Charting DiCaprio's relationships over a 20-year period, it shows a repetitive cycle where he starts dating women when they are around 20 (or in Gisele Bundchen's case, 18), but breaks up with them before their 26th birthday. (DiCaprio has also been casually linked with other women including the model Helena Christensen, who is several years older than him. However the graph charts his most public longterm relationships, with very clear results.)

As an actress/model who began dating DiCaprio when she was 20, Camila Morrone certainly fits the trend, sparking a wave of dark jokes on Twitter as news spread about their breakup.

maybe leonardo dicaprio hated 9/11 so much that he can't even date women who remember it. did that even occur to you
- Sarah Lazarus (@sarahclazarus) August 30, 2022

The girl Leonardo DiCaprio will dump when he's 72 was born today
- Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) August 31, 2022

Commentary on DiCaprio's love life has grown more pointed in recent years-both as DiCaprio himself grows older, and as public opinions shift about age-gap relationships in Hollywood. People are more conscious about the unequal power dynamics in a relationship between an established A-lister and a much younger, much less famous model.

So while DiCaprio's 25th birthday cutoff is kind of a jokey meme, there's an obvious critical subtext to people's reactions here. As one tweet put it, "leonardo dicaprio breaking up with his girlfriend before her pre-frontal cortex has fully developed " is a phenomenon as reliable as death and taxes.

white smoke has emerged from the chimney atop north hollywood high school, signaling that leonardo dicaprio has chosen a new girlfriend
- Bob Vulfov (@bobvulfov) August 30, 2022

At the same time, the meme-ification of DiCaprio's dating history has potentially shielded him from more serious criticism. His habit of breaking up with women before they turn 26 is so consistent that it's become a punchline, and opinion seems to be split over whether to label him a creep, or just dismiss this as an amusing quirk of DiCaprio's public persona.

At any rate, people will be watching closely to see who he dates next-and whether he ever manages to reach that 26-year cutoff.

Gavia Baker-Whitelaw is a staff writer at the Daily Dot, covering geek culture and fandom. Specializing in sci-fi movies and superheroes, she also appears as a film and TV critic on BBC radio. Elsewhere, she co-hosts the pop culture podcast Overinvested. Follow her on Twitter: @Hello_Tailor

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'Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?': Leonardo DiCaprio's '25th birthday rule' strikes again after Camila Morrone

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Leonardo DiCaprio's love life embodies that classic line from Matthew McConaughey's sleazebag character in Dazed and Confused: "I get older, they stay the same age." Now approaching 50, DiCaprio is notorious for dating much-younger women-invariably under the age of 25. So when he broke up with his girlfriend Camila Morrone two months after her 25th birthday, people inevitably took notice.

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 Leonardo DiCaprio, why don't you date someone your own age? The Guardian

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 Leonardo DiCaprio, why don't you date someone your own age? The Guardian

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Controversy has arisen over the phenomenon that all of Leo's predecessors were much younger than him. Some people began to criticise him for this behaviour, arguing that he hadn't established a normal romantic relationship.

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4️⃣ Leonardo DiCaprio, why don't you date someone your own age?

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Large age gaps in relationships aren't automatically problematic, but it's a major red flag if a man consistently dates women ... #️⃣[4+ sources]

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Leonardo is known to have an extensive relationship history and few of his girlfriends are over the age of 25

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Leonardo DiCaprio has his dating preferences down to a science.

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Career Advice for Leonardo DiCaprio (2010)

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Career Advice for Leonardo DiCaprio (2010)

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The article praises him for his excellent performances as anti-heroes and lists several of his classic anti-heroes。

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20th Century Fox/Paramount Pictures

Is Leonardo DiCaprio very good or very lucky? That cherubic mug once seemed destined for a career of mere prettiness. Today he's in danger of becoming his generation's most prolific leading man. Before his recent string of successes, DiCaprio swam , ran and swashbuckled his way into the arms of Martin Scorsese, the slug-browed director who turned his previous muse Robert DeNiro into that generation's finest actor.

Last week, Scorsese and DiCaprio- do we have a name for this professional marriage yet? Scorprio? LeoMart?-gave the world Shutter Island, their fifth collaboration in eight years, to great box office, if not critical, success. Next year Scorprio is expected to release their sixth offspring, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, a bio-pic based on the Pulitzer-winning book by Edmund Morris, with Leo in the title role. Scorsese wants to make Leo great. But to do that, he has to understand what makes Leo good.

This is a trickier problem than it appears. Seeing as his head was designed in a secret underground laboratory for the singular purpose of causing apoplexy among tweener girls, DiCaprio is blessed with a boyish complexion. He's also cursed with a boyish voice. In moments of dramatic agitation, his face enflames, his veins press the skin and he sends forth ... well, a proper shriek, as though the treble is dialed up to a volume that crackles the speakers. This somewhat NSFW video of Leo screaming his way through "The Beach"-but really: didn't we all?-gives you an idea:

Dramatic acting is about the pipes*, and high voices are like outer space: nobody hears you when you scream (and if they do hear you, they're likely to ignore you). Modern film's great leading dramatic actors have been almost all sonorous basses. Jack Nicholson owns a rusty set of brass. Al Pacino's throat has an orchestra to spare. Leo's voice has a bugle where a French horn ought to be. There are no bellows with him, only plaintive yelps. So Leonardo, the actor, dances around Leo, the boy voice. Sometimes he masks the voice with a dialect (Bostonian in "The Depah-ted" and "Shuttah Island"; South African in "Blood Diamond"; something-or-other in "Gangs of New York"). At worst, he senses the weightlessness of his tinny voice box and tries to power through the scene by twisting his facial muscles violently, like he's trying to wring tears through his nose. With a less photogenic actor, this might be unattractive, but with Leo it is mostly pitiable. Commanding gravitas-sincere gravitas-is a cinch when your voice comes through the floor like a subwoofer. It's damn hard to pull off with a toy trumpet in your mouth.

But here's the catch: Not all roles call for hyper-masculine gravitas powered by belly-rumbling basses. Some great roles are written for anti-heroes: frauds and cheats and double-crossing liars and mercenaries. And guess what? Leonardo DiCaprio happens to be brilliant-really, brilliant-when he's playing all of those things. He was great in The Aviator, but especially when he was descending into schizophrenia. He crushed in The Departed as a jittery double agent drawing leers from both sides of the law, and in Blood Diamond, as a conflicted mercenary. More than any movie, he dazzled in Catch Me If You Can as an outright fraud.** Those are his most impressive performances, and they're listed in order of both impressiveness and untrustworthiness. That is not a coincidence. Leonardo DiCaprio looks like a matinee idol. But he excels as an anti-hero.

Whether he's aware of it explicitly or not, DiCaprio's greatest skill is his ability to maneuver around his boyish voice, to use the toy trumpet as an instrument of mischief and doubt and insecurity. No matter how old DiCaprio grows, he's not growing new vocal chords. So Marty Scorsese, this is an open plea. I know you like this kid. I know you want to make him the king of the world, again. But this boy isn't a king. He's an Iago. If you want to get him an Oscar, find a character that mixes easy charisma with jittery deviousness. Dare us to root against that pretty little mug.

*If you don't believe me, try this exercise. Find somebody you feel extremely comfortable with. Look deep into her/his eyes. Say "I love you," twice. The first time, say in a pitch that feels high for your voice. S/he is laughing because you sound like a fool. Now take a breath, and say it again so that you can feel the vowel at the base of your throat. "I love you." See how that changed the mood a smidge? Even actors with naturally high voices are taught to speak out of their gut. Low voices command gravitas. It's science.

**I didn't see Revolutionary Road, but I hear DiCaprio played a anti-heroic weasel of a husband, and that he was excellent in the role.

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20th Century Fox/Paramount Pictures Is Leonardo DiCaprio very good or very lucky? That cherubic mug once seemed destined for a career of mere prettiness. Today he's in danger of becoming his generation's most prolific leading man.

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Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar acceptance speech for Best Actor (2016)

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Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar acceptance speech for Best Actor (2016)

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In his acceptance speech, he still did not forget to call attention to climate issues. He has used his fame to promote environmental causes, which has earned him the support and admiration of his audience。

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It is a documentary about climate change. Leonardo produced, hosted, and narrated it. The film shows DiCaprio visiting various regions of the globe, exploring the impact of global warming.

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Before the Flood is a 2016 documentary film about climate change directed by Fisher Stevens. The film was produced as a collaboration between Stevens, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Packer, Brett Ratner, Trevor Davidoski, and Jennifer Davisson Killoran. Martin Scorsese is an executive producer.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2016, and was released theatrically on October 21, before airing on the National Geographic Channel on October 30. As part of National Geographic's commitment to covering climate change, the documentary was made widely available and free of charge on various platforms.

At the European premiere in London in October 2016, DiCaprio introduced the film as follows:

Before The Flood is the product of an incredible three-year journey that took place with my co-creator and director Fisher Stevens. We went to every corner of the globe to document the devastating impacts of climate change and questioned humanity's ability to reverse what may be the most catastrophic problem mankind has ever faced. There was a lot to take in. All that we witnessed on this journey shows us that our world's climate is incredibly interconnected and that it is at urgent breaking point.... We wanted to create a film that gave people a sense of urgency, that made them understand what particular things are going to solve this problem. We bring up the issue of a carbon tax, for example, which I haven't seen in a lot of documentaries. Basically, sway a capitalist economy to try to invest in renewables, to bring less money and subsidies out of oil companies. These are the things that are really going to make a massive difference.... We need to use our vote... We cannot afford to have political leaders out there that do not believe in modern science or the scientific method or empirical truths... We cannot afford to waste time having people in power that choose to believe in the 2percent of the scientific community that is basically bought off by lobbyists and oil companies.

The film shows DiCaprio visiting various regions of the globe exploring the impact of global warming. As a narrator, DiCaprio comments these encounters as well as archive footages. DiCaprio repeatedly references a 15th-century triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, which, he explains, hung above his crib as an infant, and which he uses as an analogy of the present course of the world toward potential ruin as depicted on its final panel. The film also documents, in part, the production of DiCaprio's 2015 film The Revenant.

DiCaprio's comments and inquiries focus extensively on climate change denial, mostly among corporate lobbyists and politicians of the United States.

They interview with British-born astronaut Piers Sellers, a NASA scientist who flew on three space missions, discusses his desire to publicize the perils of global warming in the short time he expected he had remaining to live, as he had stage IV pancreatic cancer as he was being filmed. He died on December 23, 2016.

Subjects for the DVD's extra or deleted scenes include: Steven Z. Jacobson, Steven Chu, Andrew Baker, Ben Kirtman, and Sala. Topics include education, politics, coral, hurricanes, and urgency.

The film was made available freely on the internet between October 30 and November 6, 2016, the run up to US Election Day, having aired on the National Geographic Channel in 171countries and on some countries' national television channels. The film is subtitled in 45languages, making it accessible for non-English audiences. The film had been watched more than 2million times on the day following its release. It is currently available for streaming on Disney+ and Netflix.

The film takes a closer look into the possibility of a carbon tax benefiting the American nation. In addition, they state that, "the carbon emissions from Before the Flood were offset through a voluntary carbon tax."

Critical response

The film received mostly positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 72% approval rating, based on 29 reviews. On Metacritic, it has a score of 63 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "Generally favorable reviews."

Before the Flood was described as "surprisingly moving" in and as "a heartfelt, decent, educational documentary about the most important issue of our time" by The Guardian.

Variety praised the fact that "given the sincerity of its message, its ability to assemble such a watchable and comprehensive account gives it an undeniable urgency," stating that "where the film succeeds the most is by focusing on the ground-level victims of climate change, whether the polar bears of the Arctic, or the inhabitants of island nations like Kiribati."

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Before the Flood is a 2016 documentary film about climate change directed by Fisher Stevens. The film was produced as a collaboration between Stevens, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Packer, Brett Ratner, Trevor Davidoski, and Jennifer Davisson Killoran. Martin Scorsese is an executive producer.

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Leonardo's tweets often popularize the dangers of climate change and call attention to climate issues and environmental protection.

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Climate change's effects are affecting historic gravesites across the United States. Rising sea levels are threatening burial ground, such as that in Rhode Island. The state has more than 2500 graveyards, with a number of them lying in flood zones. role.

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Climate change's effects are affecting historic gravesites across the United States. Rising sea levels are threatening burial ground, such as that in Rhode Island. The state has more than 2500 graveyards, with a number of them lying in flood zones. role.

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Climate change's effects are affecting historic gravesites across the United States. Rising sea levels are threatening burial ground, such as that in Rhode Island. The state has more than 2500 graveyards, with a number of them lying in flood zones. role.
— Leonardo DiCaprio (@LeoDiCaprio) October 31, 2022

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Climate change's effects are affecting historic gravesites across the United States. Rising sea levels are threatening burial ground, such as that in Rhode Island. The state has more than 2500 graveyards, with a number of them lying in flood zones. role.

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Climate change's effects are affecting historic gravesites across the United States. Rising sea levels are threatening burial ground, such as that in Rhode Island. The state has more than 2500 graveyards, with a number of them lying in flood zones. role.

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Climate change's effects are affecting historic gravesites across the United States. Rising sea levels are threatening burial ground, such as that in Rhode Island. The state has more than 2500 graveyards, with a number of them lying in flood zones. role.

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Image characteristics: mature, witty, capable, successful, good acting

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Image characteristics: mature, witty, capable, successful, good acting

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Leonardo DiCaprio: Robbed of a Titanic Nomination? (1998)

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Leonardo DiCaprio: Robbed of a Titanic Nomination? (1998)

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After the release of Titanic, Leonardo gained a lot of female fans. Most of them are teenagers. They were upset that he didn't win an Oscar.

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It's hard to imagine film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert being in agreement with legions of limp, lovesick Leonardo DiCaprio fans, but on their Feb. 14 telecast the duo found common ground with girls around the globe. In a segment discussing this year's Academy Award nominees, Siskel emphatically declared "DiCaprio was robbed" of Oscar recognition for his role in Titanic, and Ebert chimed in, "What are they thinking?!"

Although Hollywood didn't expect DiCaprio, 23, to clinch a nomination (he had been passed over for warm-up awards like the Golden Globes), his fans did, so his Oscar no-show came as a shocking, berg-like blow to DiCapriettes everywhere. "It completely flabbergasted me," says Neera Shukla, 20, a Toronto-based college student and president of a Leonardo fan club. " Titanic brought tears to my eyes, and he was a big part of that!! I'm having difficulty believing he was just overlooked."

Given that five weeks into the movie's run, Twentieth Century Fox estimated that 7 percent of all U.S. teenage girls had seen the movie twice, it's safe to say that the teen Titaniacs were, like, really bummed. "I was upset he wasn't nominated. Extremely!" says Kim Cortes, 16, a student at New York's School of American Ballet whose bedroom is plastered with Leo posters and who's seen the ship go down four times. Adds her Titanic-crazed classmate Jessica Kusak, 16: "They went for older men, like Peter Fonda." Even Celine Dion opined on the fracas: "To me, he's James Dean. He's wonderful - I can't believe he's not nominated!"

Some outraged Leo lovers railed against the abject cruelty of it all. More than 200 DiCaprio fans have E-mailed or phoned the Academy's L.A. headquarters demanding a recount. "They're asking if anything can be done to get Leonardo nominated before the awards show," says a bemused Academy spokesman. "The calls did not just come from teenagers. One older woman called and said the whole state of Florida was upset."

But what if a nod for DiCaprio had been among Titanic's record-tying nominations? Would Hollywood be expressing its surprise? Though he's perceived as a fiercely talented actor and has been praised for his performances in movies like 1993's This Boy's Life, DiCaprio's turn in Titanic is not considered to be his personal best. "I watched Siskel and Ebert, and I couldn't believe they went on and on and on...," says one agent, who asks to remain anonymous. "I'm sure Leo's prouder of his performance in What's Eating Gilbert Grape [for which he received an Oscar nod in 1994] or Marvin's Room than Titanic. When everything's said and done, he was in a special-effects-laden movie." But if the movie's techno appeal was the obstacle, why were costars Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart still singled out? Explains Peter Rainer, chairman of the National Society of Film Critics: "The fact that Winslet and Stuart were nominated shows that the actress category was weaker. There were more obvious choices for Best Actor. And there were even better performances than his, such as Al Pacino's in Donnie Brasco, that were overlooked."

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Leonardo DiCaprio: Robbed of a Titanic Nomination?

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It's hard to imagine film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert being in agreement with legions of limp, lovesick Leonardo DiCaprio fans, but on their Feb. 14 telecast the duo found common ground with girls around the globe.

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How Leonardo DiCaprio became one of the world's top climate change champions, The Guardian (2016)

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How Leonardo DiCaprio became one of the world's top climate change champions, The Guardian (2016)

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The article introduces his main experience as a leader of climate activism. His concerns and actions on climate change have been widely noted and celebrated

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Leonardo DiCaprio was a climate champion long before the actor wrapped himself in an animal carcass, vomited up raw bison liver, and risked hypothermia for his Oscar-winning role in Revenant.

DiCaprio used his acceptance speech for best actor to urge a global audience to reject the "politics of greed", and support leaders willing to take action against climate change.

"Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating," the actor said.

The Oscars was probably the biggest audience to date for DiCaprio's activism - but campaigners who have worked with the actor said he has been steeped in the issue for years, and is desperate about the need for action.

Over the last few years, DiCaprio has steadily donated his celebrity - and at least $30m in funding according to his foundation - to help advance the United Nations climate negotiations, protect coral reefs and tigers, and spread public awareness about the dangers of climate change.

The actor has become a fixture at events focused on global challenges since 2014, dropping in at the Davos economic forum to pick up an award last January, and holding a private chat on the sidelines with Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary general, on the sidelines of the Paris climate negotiations last December.

DiCaprio marched with 400,000 through the streets of Manhattan and addressed the United Nations about the dangers of climate change in 2014, and has had private tutorials in climate science from some of the world's best researchers.

Other actors - notably Mark Ruffalo, the best supporting actor nominee on Sunday - are avowed climate campaigners, and other wealthy individuals give to environmental causes. But DiCaprio operates at a different level of fame, campaigners said.

"There are many foundations and non-governmental organisations interested in oceans and many do great work. He has a megaphone that nobody else on the planet has. He is so respected and admired and influential all around the world from the general public to head of state, so when he says something people listen," said Enric Sala, explorer-in-residence for National Geographic, who has worked with DiCaprio.

Those efforts by the Tesla-owning, scuba-diving actor have now displaced earlier public perceptions of DiCaprio as a player who surrounded himself with a succession of models - and it's been helpful for the cause.

"People like Leonardo DiCaprio have such access to people, it is amazing. When people hear him talk so forcefully and clearly about a particular issue than people listen," said Janos Pasztor, who advised Ban on climate change. "I am very glad that he did that."

DiCaprio's environmental activism may not stretch back quite as far as the first of his six Oscar nominations - that was in 1993 for What's Eating Gilbert Grape - but the actor has been steadily schooling himself on the oceans and climate change since the 1990s, campaigners said.

By his own account, DiCaprio began worrying about biodiversity and species loss as an infant. He has told interviewers his parents hung a reproduction of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights above his crib in their Los Angeles home - and he was disturbed by the depiction of the loss of Eden.

One key moment in the evolution of DiCaprio as a climate champion was a meeting with then vice-president Al Gore at the White House in 1998. DiCaprio, who has cited that meeting as the beginning of his climate activism, set up his foundation that same year.

Campaigners who have worked with the actor said he he steeps himself in the material - reading, keeping staff on hand who can brief him on climate science and policy, and travelling to locations that are on the frontline of climate change.

Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann)
Congrats to @LeoDiCaprio on well-deserved #Oscar. He & I talked about #climate threat last Fall in NYC. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/rk4MPDBApx
February 29, 2016

A decade or so after the White House meeting with Gore, the two met by chance in first class on a flight to Europe. "Leo talked to Al the whole flight over, he picked Al's brain the entire night, and it was a red eye," said Kailee Kreider, who was the working for Gore. "The two of them talked all night. That is pretty unusual."

The actor has stayed in regular contact with noted researchers - such as Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University. "I have talked with him and his folks frequently over the phone," Mann said in an email. The actor and the climate scientist met for the first time last October in a bar in New York's west village.

"The meeting lasted a couple hours, and touched on all aspects of the science of climate change, the impacts, and the solutions. I was truly impressed by Leo. He follows the issue closely, reads up about it quite a bit, (including pieces in the Guardian, I'm quite sure!), and he understands the nuances of the issues involved. His questions for me were all thoughtful and insightful. There is a lot of depth there, and I think that Leo really approaches the issue with both his heart and his head," Mann said.

"One thing that came across was a pessimism, that I find in many folks, that we will garner the will to confront this problem in time. I tried to convey, as a scientist, why it is that I am still cautiously optimistic that we will indeed rise to the occasion in time."

DiCaprio's brand of climate activism at first involved performance - such as narrating a climate change film, the 11th Hour, in 2007. But over the last few years he has increasingly used his fortune and his foundation to support conservation efforts.

DiCaprio's foundation donated $3m in 2014 to stop overfishing, $3m to protect tigers in Nepal, and funding Sala's initiative to create marine reserves in the Pacific.

The actor is currently at work on a climate change documentary that took him to Baffin Island in the Arctic last summer - and by DiCaprio's own account that is highly unlikely to be the end of his activism.

"I am consumed by this," DiCaprio told Rolling Stone last January. "There isn't a couple of hours a day where I'm not thinking about it. It's this slow burn. It's not 'aliens invading our planet next week and we have to get up and fight to defend our country,' but it's this inevitable thing, and it's so terrifying."
Topics

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How Leonardo DiCaprio became one of the world's top climate change champions

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Leonardo DiCaprio was a climate champion long before the actor wrapped himself in an animal carcass, vomited up raw bison liver, and risked hypothermia for his Oscar-winning role in Revenant. DiCaprio used his acceptance speech for best actor to urge a global audience to reject the "politics of greed", and support leaders willing to take action against climate change.

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Leonardo DiCaprio: The enigmatic actor, BBC News

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Leonardo DiCaprio: The enigmatic actor, BBC News

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The article shows that Leo gave up the advantage of his beauty and kept trying out different roles. He has received many accolades for his acting skills.

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The Revenant has brought Leonardo DiCaprio his fifth Oscar nomination in an acting category and this weekend he's widely expected to finally take the Academy Award for Best Actor. Yet DiCaprio remains enigmatic.

More than 20 years ago director Agnieszka Holland got to know the young actor when she made period drama Total Eclipse, based on the Christopher Hampton play about the poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. She says even then the instincts of a natural screen actor were obvious.

Set in 19th Century France, writer Verlaine became obsessed with Rimbaud who was a decade younger. The relationship was a complex blend of emotional dependence, addiction, literary ambition and sex.

The role of Rimbaud had been meant for River Phoenix until he died aged 23. Joining the project as director, Polish-born Holland knew she wanted DiCaprio as Rimbaud.

"Leonardo was always courageous in choosing roles," she says. "He was curious about things and wanted to explore.

"And there is something else. His father George, who has been a big influence over him, loved Arthur Rimbaud. He even edited a book about absinthe, the big drink of literary Paris. He thought his son couldn't possibly refuse the job.

"I went to a bookshop and found a t-shirt which had a drawing of Rimbaud on it and Rimbaud looked just like Leonardo. So I sent that to his agent and that was the beginning of our relationship."

But with its intense subject matter and its scenes of love-making between Rimbaud and Verlaine (played by David Thewlis), it was hardly a project you'd expect America's latest teen idol to alight on.

"Probably Leonardo was still 19, but not for one moment did I have the impression I was dealing with a newcomer," Holland says.

"He was one of the most mature actors I've ever worked with. His young age was more visible off the set: he would play tricks, about what he wanted to eat or whatever.

"But I had seen him act in This Boy's Life, with Robert De Niro, and in What's Eating Gilbert Grape [both in 1993]. His talent was obvious. After River died it was clear Leonardo was the most fascinating young actor there was - I think without him, I would never have made the picture.

"At the start of the story I needed him to convince as a 16 year-old. Somehow he could do that and, at the same time, be utterly mature in himself. I hadn't seen the film for a long time but recently I showed it to some students: I was still thrilled by his performance and I think it's one of his best.

"Today gay stories have become more popular. But at that time I knew that, for a California boy, it would be difficult to make this journey. David Thewlis was incredibly helpful.

"Talking to Leonardo I realised he has an incredibly deep emotional imagination. In performance he becomes a kind of medium - the soul of the character he's playing is entering his body."

Holland says DiCaprio has never been a classic American method actor, using personal experience to construct a character's inner life: "But he's doing some trick which is pretty mysterious to everyone watching - frankly even for the director. Look at him on screen and, for the moment of the shot, he really becomes the character."

Stacey Wilson Hunt covers Hollywood for New York magazine. She believes the fact most observers regard DiCaprio as a shoo-in for best actor this year has to do with more than just The Revenant.

"It's a good film, but in Hollywood there's been a sense for some time that Leo is overdue a major award. He hasn't made a really bad or dull film in more than 10 years - not something you can say of Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise or Will Smith. And people just like Leo, which in Hollywood is a big part of who wins what.

"Leo is a mystery - and people like mysteries. He's somehow managed to keep a relatively private life - despite the high-profile dalliances with supermodels. And in recent years his priority is more being an activist - it's absolutely clear when you hear him speak.

"That side of Leo is not just for show - he's given millions of dollars to environmental charities.

"People appreciate the way he keeps a distance from the film business. I was at a Screen Actors Guild event last year where he got an award for his humanitarian work. Perhaps because it wasn't televised he was very relaxed and it was touching the way he acknowledged the strength his parents had given him - especially because they were in the audience.

"His parents were very much bohemians who let him grow into his own person and you can see he remains very close [to them].

"He's learned to use the media for causes he's interested in. So his Hollywood friends include people like Mark Ruffalo, who's a big activist too. But for all that I think Leo will always be a mystery - either he's keeping something to himself, or he's incredibly grown-up now."

Holland says even in the 1990s, when they were shooting Total Eclipse, she could tell DiCaprio didn't want to remain the teen idol he was becoming - though he still had both Romeo + Juliet and Titanic ahead of him.

"Leonardo wanted to be a man. I know he didn't like being so slim and child-like, almost androgynous. After Titanic I believe he wanted to show he was a serious actor who could do big, serious parts. But in our film together, and then in Titanic, he's incredibly beautiful on screen. And Leonardo has a gift for lightness and humour and irony, even if that's not really part of The Revenant."

Why does Holland believe DiCaprio's life has never gone off the rails in public, as happens with some actors who find fame and wealth early?

"We made Total Eclipse in Paris and Brussels and Djibouti, but wherever we went it was clear he had a solid grounding. He was true to his roots and loyal to his family, and he still is. He respects people not because of their celebrity or money, but because of their human qualities - he's not a snob.

"When someone has a very special talent you can say it was given by God. Of course he's worked to develop his talent over the years. But if you look back, even before Total Eclipse, it was there from the very beginning."

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The Revenant has brought Leonardo DiCaprio his fifth Oscar nomination in an acting category and this weekend he's widely expected to finally take the Academy Award for Best Actor. Yet DiCaprio remains enigmatic.

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In the film, Leonardo takes on the challenge of playing both the calm and collected federal investigator and the emotionally unstable psychopath.

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Shutter Island is a 2010 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted by Laeta Kalogridis, based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Deputy U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels, who is investigating a psychiatric facility on Shutter Island after one of the patients goes missing. Mark Ruffalo plays his partner and fellow deputy marshal, Ben Kingsley plays the facility's lead psychiatrist, Max von Sydow plays a German doctor, and Michelle Williams plays Daniels' wife.

Released on February 19, 2010, Shutter Island received generally positive reviews from critics, was chosen by the National Board of Review as one of the top ten films of 2010, and grossed $299 million worldwide. The film is noted for its soundtrack, which prominently used classical music, such as that of Gustav Mahler, Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, John Cage, Ingram Marshall, and Max Richter.

In 1954, U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule travel to Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island, Boston Harbor to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando, a patient of the hospital who had previously drowned her three children.

The staff, led by psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley, appear uncooperative. The marshals learn that Dr. Lester Sheehan, who was treating Solando, had left the island on vacation immediately after Solando disappeared. Teddy experiences migraine headaches, flashbacks of his experiences as a U.S. Army soldier during the liberation of Dachau, and also vivid dreams of his wife Dolores, who was killed in a fire set by arsonist Andrew Laeddis. Teddy explains to Chuck that he took the case to find Laeddis, believing he is on the island. Solando suddenly resurfaces and believes Teddy is her husband. Teddy later breaks into the restricted Ward C to find Laeddis where he meets patient George Noyce who appears to know him well. He tells Teddy that the doctors are experimenting on patients, some of whom are taken to a lighthouse to be lobotomized. He warns Teddy that everyone is deceiving him and tells him not to trust Chuck.

Teddy regroups with Chuck and they climb the cliffs toward the lighthouse but become separated. Believing he saw Chuck's body on the rocks below, Teddy climbs down but finds only a cave where a woman claiming to be the real Solando is hiding. She states that she is a former psychiatrist who discovered clandestine experiments to develop mind control but was forcibly committed. She says that Cawley and Dr. Naehring will use Teddy's war trauma to feign a psychotic break, allowing them to have him also committed. Teddy returns to the hospital and is greeted by Cawley. When Teddy asks about Chuck's whereabouts, Cawley firmly insists that Teddy does not have a partner and that he arrived on the island alone.

Convinced Chuck was taken to the lighthouse, Teddy heads there but runs into Naehring, who attempts to sedate him. Teddy overpowers him and breaks into the lighthouse, only to discover Cawley waiting for him. Teddy confronts Cawley and reveals his encounter with Solando, saying he believes Cawley is experimenting on him. Cawley denies that Solando ever existed, and insists that Teddy has not been drugged, explaining the tremors as withdrawals from Chlorpromazine, a neuroleptic medication that Teddy has been taking for two years. Chuck arrives and reveals he is in fact, Dr. Sheehan. Cawley explains that "Teddy" is Andrew Laeddis, a U.S. Marshal incarcerated at Ashecliffe for murdering his manic depressive wife after she drowned their three children. Andrew did not seek treatment for Dolores when she burned down their apartment and instead moved his family to a lake house, where Dolores carried out the killings. Cawley explains that Andrew's delusion is a result of his guilt, that his migraines and hallucinations are withdrawal symptoms, and that he had created the alternate persona of Edward Daniels, also a Marshal, who acted violently and espoused conspiracy theories about the facility. The "investigation" is an elaborate role-play to regain his true persona. Overwhelmed by his sudden recall, Andrew faints.

Awakening later, Andrew calmly recounts the truth, satisfying the doctors that he is lucid. Cawley notes that they had achieved this state nine months before, but that Andrew had quickly regressed. He warns that this will be Andrew's last chance and if he lapses again he will be lobotomized due to his very violent conduct towards other patients such as Noyce, and towards the guards. Sometime later, Andrew relaxes on the hospital grounds with Sheehan. Appearing delusional, Andrew again refers to Sheehan as "Chuck" and says they must leave the island. Sheehan signals to Cawley, who orders that Andrew be lobotomized. Andrew then asks Sheehan if it would be worse "to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?" A stunned Sheehan calls Andrew "Teddy" but the latter does not respond and leaves peacefully with the orderlies for his operation.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Edward "Teddy" Daniels, who is later revealed to be Andrew Laeddis, a US Marshall who shot his wife two years previously.

Mark Ruffalo as Chuck Aule, who is later revealed to be Dr. Lester Sheehan, Teddy's primary psychiatrist.

Ben Kingsley as Dr. John Cawley, a senior psychiatrist at the hospital, who also treats Teddy.

Max von Sydow as Dr. Naehring, a psychiatrist at the hospital helping in the role-play with Teddy.

Michelle Williams as Dolores, Teddy's manic-depressive wife, who set fire to their apartment and later drowned their three children.

Emily Mortimer as Rachel 1, who admits to drowning her children and thinks Teddy is her husband, but is later revealed to be a nurse helping in the role-play.

Patricia Clarkson as Rachel 2, who Teddy meets in a cave, and who presents herself as the real Rachel and affirms his conspiracies about the hospital, but who is later revealed as a figment of his imagination.

Jackie Earle Haley as George Noyce, a patient in Ward C who is later revealed to have been violently beaten by Teddy two weeks earlier.

Ted Levine as Warden, who later tells Teddy that he is the most violent man on the island.

John Carroll Lynch as Deputy Warden McPherson.

Joseph Sikora as Glen Miga.

Elias Koteas as Laeddis, the fictional arsonist that Teddy invented who he believes killed Dolores.

Robin Bartlett as Bridget Kearns.

Christopher Denham as Peter Breene.

Curtiss Cook as Trey Washington.

The rights to Dennis Lehane's novel Shutter Island were first optioned to Columbia Pictures in 2003. Columbia did not act on the option, and it lapsed back to Lehane, who sold it to Phoenix Pictures. Phoenix hired Laeta Kalogridis, and together they developed the film for a year. Director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio were both attracted to the project. Production began on March 6, 2008.

Lehane's inspiration for the hospital and island setting was Long Island in Boston Harbor, which he had visited during the blizzard of 1978 as a child with his uncle and family.

Shutter Island was mainly filmed in Massachusetts, with Taunton being the location for the World War II flashback scenes. Old industrial buildings in Taunton's Whittenton Mills Complex replicated the Dachau concentration camp. The old Medfield State Hospital in Medfield, Massachusetts, was another key location. Cawley's office scenes were the second floor of the chapel during the late evening. Lights were shone through the windows to make it look like it was daytime. The crew painted the hospital's brick walls to look like plywood. This served the dual purpose of acting as scenery and blocking the set from view of a local road. The crew wanted to film at the old Worcester State Hospital, but demolition of surrounding buildings made it impossible. The stone lodge, next to Leach Pond, at Borderland State Park in Easton, Massachusetts, was used for the cabin scene. The film used Peddocks Island as a setting for the story's island. East Point, in Nahant, Massachusetts, was the location for the lighthouse scenes. The scenes where Teddy and Chuck are caught in the hurricane were filmed at the Wilson Mountain Reservation in Dedham, Massachusetts. Filming ended on July 2, 2008.

Shutter Island: Music from the Motion Picture was released on February 2, 2010, by Rhino Records. The film does not have an original score. Instead, Scorsese's longtime collaborator Robbie Robertson created an ensemble of previously recorded material to use in the film.

According to a statement on Paramount's website: "The collection of modern classical music [on the soundtrack album] was hand-selected by Robertson, who is proud of its scope and sound. 'This may be the most outrageous and beautiful soundtrack I've ever heard.' [Robertson stated]."

A full track listing of the album is below. All the musical works are featured in the final film.

1. "National Polish Radio Symphony & Symphony No. 3: Passacaglia - Allegro Moderato" (Krzysztof Penderecki) - Antoni Wit

2. "Music for Marcel Duchamp" (John Cage) - Philipp Vandré

3. "Rothko Chapel 2" (Morton Feldman) - UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus

4. "Uaxuctum: The Legend of the Mayan City Which They Themselves Destroyed for Religious Reasons - 3rd Movement" (Giacinto Scelsi) - Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

5. "Quartet for Strings and Piano in A Minor" (Gustav Mahler) - Prazak Quartet

1. "Suite for Symphonic Strings: Nocturne" (Lou Harrison) - The New Professionals Orchestra & Rebecca Miller

2. "Four Hymns: II for Cello and Double Bass" (Alfred Schnittke) - Torleif Thedéen & Entcho Radoukanov

3. "Prelude - The Bay" - Ingram Marshall

4. "This Bitter Earth"/"On the Nature of Daylight" - Dinah Washington & Max Richter; arrangement by Robbie Robertson

Shutter Island is a period piece with nods to different films in the film noir and horror genres, paying particular homage to Alfred Hitchcock's works. Scorsese stated in an interview that the main reference to Teddy Daniels was Dana Andrews's character in , and that he was also influenced by several very low-budget 1940s zombie movies made by Val Lewton. The main frame of the plot resembles that of William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration, as well as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. La Croix noted that Shutter Island was a "complex and puzzling" work that borrowed from genres as diverse as detective, fantasy, and the psychological thriller.

There have been differing opinions over the ending of the film, in which Laeddis asks Dr. Sheehan, "which would be worse - to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?", a line that does not appear in the book. Professor James Gilligan of New York University was Scorsese's psychiatric adviser, and he said that Laeddis's last words mean: "I feel too guilty to go on living. I'm not going to actually commit suicide, but I'm going to vicariously commit suicide by handing myself over to these people who're going to lobotomize me." Dennis Lehane, however, said, "Personally, I think he has a momentary flash.... It's just one moment of sanity mixed in the midst of all the other delusions."

Director Martin Scorsese at the film's premiere at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival

The film was originally scheduled to be released by Paramount Pictures in the United States and Canada on October 2, 2009. Paramount later announced it was going to push back the release date to February 19, 2010. Reports attribute the pushback to Paramount not having "the financing in 2009 to spend the $50 to $60 million necessary to market a big awards pic like this", to DiCaprio's unavailability to promote the film internationally, and to Paramount's hope that the economy might rebound enough by February 2010 that a film geared toward adult audiences would be more viable financially.

The film premiered at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival as part of the competition screening on February 13, 2010. Spanish distributor Manga Films distributed the film in Spain after winning a bidding war that reportedly reached the $6 million to $8 million range.

The film also premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2010 and the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in 2009.

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 69% based on 264 reviews, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "It may not rank with Scorsese's best work, but Shutter Island's gleefully unapologetic genre thrills represent the director at his most unrestrained." On Metacritic, the film received a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average "C+" grade, on an A+ to F scale.

Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer gave the film 4/4 stars, claiming, "After four decades, Martin Scorsese has earned the right to deliver a simple treatment of a simple theme with flair." Writing for The Wall Street Journal, John Anderson highly praised the film, suggesting it "requires multiple viewings to be fully realized as a work of art. Its process is more important than its story, its structure more important than the almost perfunctory plot twists it perpetrates. It's a thriller, a crime story and a tortured psychological parable about collective guilt." Awarding the film stars out of 4, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "the movie is about: atmosphere, ominous portents, the erosion of Teddy's confidence and even his identity. It's all done with flawless directorial command. Scorsese has fear to evoke, and he does it with many notes."

The Orlando Sentinel's Roger Moore, who gave the film stars out of 4, wrote, "It's not bad, but as Scorsese, America's greatest living filmmaker and film history buff should know, even Hitchcock came up short on occasion. See for yourself." Dana Stevens of described the film "an aesthetically and at times intellectually exciting puzzle, but it's never emotionally involving". The Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday negatively described the film as being "weird". A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote in his review that "Something TERRIBLE is afoot. Sadly, that something turns out to be the movie itself."

Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York named Shutter Island the fifth-best film of 2010.

Shutter Island was released alongside The Ghost Writer, and with $41 million finished first at the box office and gave Scorsese his highest-grossing box office opening to-date. The film remained at #1 in its second weekend, with $22.2 million. Eventually, it grossed worldwide $294,805,697 and became Scorsese's second highest-grossing film worldwide. It is Scorsese's fifth movie to debut at the box office at #1 following Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, , and The Departed.

Shutter Island was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 8, 2010, in the US and on August 2, 2010, in the UK. The UK release featured two editions-a standard edition and a limited steel-case edition. For the tenth anniversary, Paramount Pictures released on February 11, 2020, a 4K steelbook + Blu-ray.

In August 2014, Paramount Television and HBO were reported to be brainstorming a TV series called Ashecliffe, which would serve as an origin story for the film.

A video game based on the film was released for PC. A Nintendo DS version was planned, but cancelled.

1. ^

2. ^ "20 Movies To Watch If You Loved Shutter Island". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on March 5, 2020.

3. Symkus, Ed, ^ "Real local flavor on display in 'Shutter Island'" Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, The Patriot Ledger, February 19, 2010

4. ^

5. ^

6. ^

7. ^ Saba, Michael (February 19, 2010). "Shutter Island Review". Paste Magazine. Archived from the original on June 14, 2018. Scorsese gets his Hitchcock on.

8. ^ Brown, Mick (March 7, 2010). "Martin Scorsese interview for Shutter Island". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on November 10, 2019. 'The key film I showed Leo and Mark,' Scorsese says, 'was Laura-Dana Andrews, the way he wears his tie, and the way he walks through a room, and he doesn't even look at anybody; he's always playing that little game. He's just trying to get the facts.' But the films, he adds, that he had 'really tied up tight' in mood and tone were the lower-than-low-budget schlockers made in the 1940s by Val Lewton when he was the head of the 'horror department' at RKO Pictures-Cat People, Isle of the Dead, The Seventh Victim and I Walked with a Zombie.

9. ^ Daniels, Derek (December 1, 2010). "The Ninth Configuration (Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Archived from the original on December 6, 2017. 30 years before the disappointing Shutter Island took viewers to a remote mental asylum with a world-turned-upside-down storyline, William Peter Blatty gave us this...

10. ^ "'Shutter Island' shows the power of isolation". Los Angeles Times. February 21, 2010. Archived from the original on April 9, 2018. A better version of this basic story was done 29 years ago by William Peter Blatty: The Ninth Configuration.

11. ^ Packer, Sharon (September 5, 2012). Cinema's Sinister Psychiatrists: from Caligari to Hannibal. New York, NY: McFarland. p. 197. ISBN 9780786463909. Archived from the original on November 17, 2016. The Ninth Configuration is far less polished than Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, but the principle is the same.

12. ^ Raw, Kaurence & Ersin Tutan, Defne (2012). The Adaptation of History: Essays on Ways of Telling the Past. McFarland and Company. p. 51. ISBN 9780786472543. Archived from the original on November 17, 2016.

13. ^ Gregoriou, Christiana (2012). Constructing Crime: Discourse and Cultural Representations of Crime and 'Deviance'. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 79. ISBN 9780230392083. Archived from the original on November 17, 2016.

14. ^

15. ^ "Shutter Island Pushed Back to February" Archived December 11, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. ComingSoon.com. Retrieved November 19, 2010.

16. ^ "Shutter Island" Archived February 11, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Berlinale 2010. Retrieved November 19, 2010.

17. ^ "Awards for Shutter Island (2010)". Internet Movie Database. Archived from the original on February 1, 2017.

18. ^ Toppman, Lawrence. "'Shutter' yields shudders - and ideas". The Charlotte Observer. Archived from the original on March 31, 2013.

19. ^ Anderson, John (February 19, 2010). "Film Reviews: Scorsese's 'Shutter Island', Polanski's 'The Ghost Writer'". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on September 30, 2017.

20. ^

21. ^ Moore, Roger (February 17, 2010). "Movie Review: Shutter Island". Orlando Sentinel.

22. ^ Scott, A. O. (February 19, 2010). "Movie Review: Shutter Island". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 21, 2010.

23. ^ Laughlin, Andrew (February 15, 2010). "'Shutter Island' game released for PC". Digital Spy.

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Shutter Island is a 2010 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted by Laeta Kalogridis, based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Deputy U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels, who is investigating a psychiatric facility on Shutter Island after one of the patients goes missing.

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His character, Hugh Glass is brave, strong and resilient, with great willpower and extensive experience in the wilderness. The audience can see a 'wild man'-like Leonardo. The film earned him numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Critic's Choice Award for Best Actor.

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The Revenant is a 2015 American semi-biographical epic western film directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The screenplay by Mark L. Smith and Iñárritu is based in part on Michael Punke's 2002 novel of the same name, describing frontiersman Hugh Glass's experiences in 1823.

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He plays a professional thief who specializes in conning secrets from his victims by infiltrating their dreams. His character also needs to evade the police. Characteristics include wittiness, thoughtfulness, strong, composed

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Pursuing a variety of roles and acting breakthroughs.

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Leonardo as a teenager who turned into a con artist and later the FBI’s Bank Fraud Consultant in the Financial Crimes Unit. The character he played is intelligent and confident.

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In 1991, Leonardo became a recurring cast member on Growing Pains, playing Luke Brower, a homeless boy who is taken in by the Seaver family. Co-star Joanna Kerns recalled DiCaprio being "especially intelligent and disarming for his age,"

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Leonardo plays an intellectually disabled teenager in the film， who is Lively and often causes trouble.

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Key words: Lively, active, adorable, boy next door

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Leonardo DiCaprio in Paris (1995), MTV News

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Leonardo DiCaprio in Paris (1995), MTV News

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This is an interview with Leonardo after he finished filming Basketball diaries. During the interview, he was lively and active, playing with a toy bird every now and then

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Leonardo DiCaprio in Paris (1995) 🇫🇷 You Had To Be There | MTV News

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Leonardo played Romeo in the film.  Characteristics include handsome, Brave, enthusiastic, frankness and affectionate.

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William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (often shortened to Romeo + Juliet) is a 1996 romantic crime film directed, produced, and co-written by Baz Luhrmann. It is a modernized adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name, albeit still utilizing Shakespearean English. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles of two teenagers who fall in love, despite their being members of feuding families. Brian Dennehy, John Leguizamo, Miriam Margolyes, Harold Perrineau, Pete Postlethwaite, Paul Sorvino and Diane Venora also star in supporting roles. It is the third major film version of the play, following adaptations by George Cukor in 1936 and by Franco Zeffirelli in 1968.

The film was released on November 1, 1996, by 20th Century Fox. It was met with generally positive reviews from critics and grossed over $147 million against its $14.5 million budget. At the 47th Berlin International Film Festival in 1997, DiCaprio won the Silver Bear for Best Actor and Luhrmann won the Alfred Bauer Prize. At the 69th Academy Awards, Catherine Martin and Brigitte Broch were nominated for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration. In 2005, the film was included on the BFI list of the "50 films you should watch by the age of 14".

The film was also re-released in Luhrmann's Red Curtain Trilogy DVD box set in 2002 together with Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Moulin Rouge! (2001).

In Verona Beach, the Capulets and Montagues are two rival business empires. The animosity of the older generation-Fulgencio and Gloria Capulet and Ted and Caroline Montague-is felt by their younger relatives. A shootout between Montagues led by Benvolio, Romeo's cousin, and Capulets led by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, creates chaos in the city. Being the third civil brawl, the Chief of Police, Captain Prince, reprimands the families, warning them that if such an event occurs again, their lives "shall pay the forfeit of the peace".

Benvolio and Romeo learn of a Capulet party that evening, which they decide to gate-crash. Romeo agrees on hearing that Rosaline, with whom he is madly in love, is attending. They meet their friend, Mercutio, who has tickets to the party, and Romeo takes ecstasy as they proceed to the Capulet mansion. The effects of the drug and the party overwhelm Romeo, who goes to the restroom. There he sees and meets Juliet, and the two instantly fall in love, both unaware of who the other is. Tybalt spots Romeo and vows to kill him for trespassing into his family's home.

After Romeo leaves the party, he and Juliet each learn that they belong to feuding families, but Romeo returns to see her. He proposes. Juliet tells him that if he sends word by the following day, they will be betrothed. The next day, Romeo asks Father Laurence to marry them, and he agrees. Romeo passes the word on via Juliet's nurse, and they soon get married.

Tybalt encounters Mercutio and Romeo at the beach. Romeo attempts to make peace, but Tybalt assaults him. Mercutio intervenes and batters Tybalt, and is about to kill him when Romeo stops him. Tybalt takes the opportunity to fatally wound Mercutio, who curses both houses before dying. Enraged, Romeo chases after the fleeing Tybalt and shoots him dead, avenging Mercutio's death.

Captain Prince banishes Romeo from the city, and he goes into hiding with Father Laurence. The nurse arrives and tells him that Juliet is waiting for him. Romeo climbs Juliet's balcony and they consummate their marriage, with Romeo departing the next morning. Meanwhile, Fulgencio decides Juliet will marry Dave Paris, the governor's son.

The next morning, Gloria informs Juliet that she is to marry Paris, and when Juliet refuses, Fulgencio physically assaults her and threatens to disown her. Juliet runs away and seeks out Father Laurence, imploring him to help her, while threatening to commit suicide. Father Laurence gives her a potion that will let her fake her own death, after which she will be placed within the Capulet vault to awaken 24 hours later. Father Laurence vows to inform Romeo of the plot via overnight letter, whereupon the latter will sneak into the vault and, once reunited with Juliet, the two will escape to Mantua, a remote trailer park in the desert where Romeo has been hiding out. Romeo does not see the delivered letter, however, and, believing Juliet to be dead, buys a vial of poison from an apothecary.

Romeo enters the church where Juliet lies and consumes the poison just as Juliet wakes up. Distraught over Romeo's death, Juliet picks up his gun and shoots herself in the head, falling down beside his lifeless body. Romeo's body is being taken inside an ambulance with a crowd of spectators and reporters observing the incident from behind the police line, when the parents of both Romeo and Juliet arrive on the scene. Captain Prince approaches their fathers, and berates them both for the deaths of their children that their foolish brawl has caused.

Natalie Portman had been cast as Juliet but, during rehearsals, it was thought that she looked too young for the part, and the footage looked as though DiCaprio was " molesting" her. Luhrmann stated that Portman was too young at the time, and made DiCaprio look older than intended. He was 21 at the time of filming and Portman was only 14.

After Sarah Michelle Gellar turned down the role due to scheduling conflicts, DiCaprio proclaimed that Danes should be cast, as he felt she was genuine in her line delivery and did not try to impress him by acting flirtatious.

Christian Bale read for the role of Mercutio, but the production crew decided to go with an African-American actor for the role instead.

Differences between the film and the original play

While it retains the original Shakespearean dialogue, the film represents the Montagues and the Capulets as warring mafia empires (with legitimate business fronts) and the Capulets were "a Latin family, sort of," played by Latin-American and Italian actors. It is set in contemporary United States, where swords are replaced by guns (with model names such as "Dagger", "Sword", and "Rapier"), and with a FedEx-style overnight delivery service called "Post Haste".

Some characters' names are also changed: Paris, Lord and Lady Montague, and Lord and Lady Capulet are given first names (in the original, their first names are never mentioned); Friar Laurence becomes Father Laurence; and Prince Escalus is rewritten as the police chief of Verona Beach, being renamed Captain Prince.

The adaptation eliminates the character of Friar John, and some characters change families: in the original, Gregory and Sampson are Capulets, but in the film, they are Montagues; conversely, Abram, as Abra, is shifted from the Montague to the Capulet family.

Production

The film was an international co-production involving principals from the United States, Mexico, Australia, and Canada. After the success of his earlier film Strictly Ballroom (1992), Baz Luhrmann took some time deciding on his next project:

"Our philosophy has always been that we think up what we need in our life, choose something creative that will make that life fulfilling, and then follow that road. With Romeo and Juliet what I wanted to do was to look at the way in which Shakespeare might make a movie of one of his plays if he was a director. How would he make it? We don't know a lot about Shakespeare, but we do know he would make a 'movie' movie. He was a player. We know about the Elizabethan stage and that he was playing for 3000 drunken punters, from the street sweeper to the Queen of England - and his competition was bear-baiting and prostitution. So he was a relentless entertainer and a user of incredible devices and theatrical tricks to ultimately create something of meaning and convey a story. That was what we wanted to do."

Luhrmann obtained some funds from Fox to do a workshop and shoot some teaser footage in Sydney. Leonardo DiCaprio agreed to pay his own expenses to fly to Sydney and be part of it. Once Fox saw footage of the fight scene, they agreed to support it.

All of the development was done in Australia, with pre-production in Australia and Canada and post-production in Australia. While some parts of the film were shot in Miami, most of the film was shot in Mexico City and Boca del Rio, Veracruz. For instance, the Capulet mansion was set at Chapultepec Castle, while the ballroom was built on Stage One of Churubusco Studios; the church exterior was the Templo del Purísimo Corazón de María ("Immaculate Heart of Mary") in the Del Valle neighborhood.

The film premiered on November 1, 1996, in the United States and Canada, in 1,276 theaters, and grossed $11.1 million its opening weekend, ranking number one at the US box office. It went on to gross $46.3 million in the United States and Canada.

In Australia, the film opened on Boxing Day and was number one at the Australian box office with a gross of A$3.3 million (US$2.6 million) for the week. It remained number one for a second week and returned to the top in its fourth week. It was the ninth highest-grossing film in Australia for 1997 with a calendar year gross of A$12.9 million. Overall, it has grossed US$12.6 million in Australia and US$147,554,998 worldwide.

Critical response

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported 74% of 69 critics gave a positive review, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Baz Luhrmann's visual aesthetic is as divisive as it is fresh and inventive." Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 60 out of 100 based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

James Berardinelli gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Ultimately, no matter how many innovative and unconventional flourishes it applies, the success of any adaptation of a Shakespeare play is determined by two factors: the competence of the director and the ability of the main cast members. Luhrmann, Danes, and DiCaprio place this Romeo and Juliet in capable hands."

Conversely, Roger Ebert gave the film a mixed review of only two stars out of four, saying, "I've seen as a samurai drama and as a Mafia story, and two different Romeo and Juliets about ethnic difficulties in Manhattan (West Side Story and ), but I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of Romeo & Juliet makes of Shakespeare's tragedy."

Romeo + Juliet competed for the Golden Bear at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival, winning the Alfred Bauer Prize for Luhrmann and the Silver Bear for Best Actor for DiCaprio. It received seven nominations at the 51st British Academy Film Awards and won in four categories, including Best Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film received a single nomination for Best Art Direction at the 69th Academy Awards.

Other notable ceremonies where it received much recognition included audience oriented award shows, such as the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, and the MTV Movie Awards.

American Film Institute recognition

The film was originally released on DVD on March 19, 2002, by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. A 10th anniversary special edition DVD containing extra features and commentary was released on February 6, 2007, and a Blu-ray edition was released on October 19, 2010.

Retrospective reviews

The film maintains a popular reputation among English teachers, as a means through which to introduce secondary school students to the play. Although not to every critic's taste, the film is now recognised as one of the most influential Shakespeare film adaptations ever made.

Miriam Margolyes, who played the nurse in the film, wrote about her experiences on the film in her 2021 memoir This Much Is True. On her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, she wrote:

"Leonardo has grown into an extremely fine actor but back then he was just a handsome boy who didn't always wash; he was quite smelly in that very male way some young men are. Sometimes he wore a dress. 'Leonardo, I think you're gay,' I said. He laughed and said, 'No Miriam. I'm really not gay.' But I was wrong. We filmed in Mexico City, paradise for someone like me who loves fossicking around flea markets and antiques shops, and, like me, Leonardo was into bling in a big way, too. We'd spend hours going through the markets together. I don't know that I've ever had such fun."

She further commented on the chemistry between the film's two leads:

"I liked [DiCaprio] tremendously and admired his work, but luckily I was immune from his groin charms, unlike poor Claire Danes, then only 17. It was obvious to all of us that she really was in love with her Romeo, but Leonardo wasn't in love with her. She wasn't his type at all. He didn't know how to cope with her evident infatuation. He wasn't sensitive to her feelings, was dismissive of her and could be quite nasty in his keenness to get away, while Claire was utterly sincere and so open. It was painful to watch. Many years later, I was in a restaurant and she came up to me and said: 'We worked together on a film once, I don't know if you remember me? My name is Claire Danes.' It was the opposite of the arrogant behaviour of some stars and so typical of her."

Soundtrack

References

Further reading

External links

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William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (often shortened to Romeo + Juliet ) is a 1996 romantic crime film directed, produced, and co-written by Baz Luhrmann. It is a modernized adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name, albeit still utilizing Shakespearean English.

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"A Powerfully Complex ‘Boy’s Life’ : This Boy Is Taking His Acting Life Very Seriously", the Los Angeles Times(1993)

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"A Powerfully Complex ‘Boy’s Life’ : This Boy Is Taking His Acting Life Very Seriously", the Los Angeles Times(1993)

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“Being the hunk-of-the month annoys me. They bring you in like a piece of meat, saying, ‘Here’s the next cute kid.’ And it could ruin your career, you get washed up really fast. I’m looking for longevity.” Leonardo said in the interview, which shows he realized that his current star image would inhibit his development and he wanted to change it.

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"This Boy's Life" is bringing 18-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio flattering reviews and job offers. So, he'd just as soon like to forget his more humble beginnings as an actor.

"Why does everyone know about this? Yeah, it was my first movie and uh . . . is this in like the press package thing? Does it say 'Critters III' in bold red letters?"

Well, not red.

And then there's always . . .

"The public service announcements? That's not exactly a career booster there."

DiCaprio is squirming at this point, though he can probably relax. Besides "This Boy's Life," he has got "Gilbert Grape" coming out this fall, directed by Lasse Hallstrom ("My Life as a Dog"). He gets to flex his acting muscles there, playing a mentally handicapped character. He is also at the enviable point where he can choose his next role rather than audition for it.

"Mickey's Safety Club" probably can be dropped from his resume.

In "This Boy's Life," DiCaprio stars with two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro and Ellen Barkin. He knew he was working with two dramatic heavyweights.

"I could think of it as being intimidating," he says during an interview in a Beverly Hills hotel.

"I just tried to not concentrate on it because then I would be too involved with them and not my performance in the movie. And I wouldn't be thinking about having to fill the potential I have for making this a good movie, because basically it was on my shoulders."

DiCaprio is, indeed, the center of the "This Boy's Life," adapted from Tobias Wolff's autobiographical novel of the same name. He plays Toby, whose mother (Barkin) marries the mentally and physically abusive Dwight (De Niro).

"This doesn't necessarily happen to every kid, but that's not what the story is all about--the abusive things. It's about a lot more than that. It's a real depiction of how a boy grows up in the '50s, the struggle. It's very honest, which is the main thing I liked about the book and the script and the movie--that it's honest to 'This Boy's Life,' Tobias Wolff's life," he says.

DiCaprio isn't steering his career toward comedy or drama, but projects that are "real." It's rare, he says, to find a good story that hasn't been done before--something he thinks he succeeded in doing with "This Boy's Life."

"The fight scenes were pretty rough--not physically hurting--but mental anguish. You feel drained emotionally. Being an actor, I know it's not real. But if you're in the moment and what you're doing is real to yourself, you just can't help but feel emotionally disrupted," he says.

DiCaprio calls the role of Toby "the best part . . . for a young man in decades." Fortunately, he wasn't drawing on too much of his own experience.

"Well, I could say I stemmed it from the abuse of my dog, or something. No, it was basically acting," he says. "I don't have a father like that. He's not like Dwight in any way. I couldn't really stem it from anything because I had a great childhood. I guess being frustrated as a teen-ager is probably the only thing."

So maybe there are no Method acting classes in his background. Actually, there are no acting classes, period.

"I wasn't really serious about (acting) until I started getting roles and realizing that I actually liked to act. Then I understood more about being an actor and what it was all about. Now I realize this is something I want to do for a long time, if not forever."

This decision process started when he was about 14 and got some guest parts on TV series. In 1991, he landed the role of Luke, a homeless boy who moves in with the family on "Growing Pains." But now he has to make that critical transition from teen actor to actor.

"I'll have to make that transition very soon, like now. You know . . . as soon as my body starts maturing," he says, deliberately deepening his voice. "I'll have to start changing the course of my career to adapt to better situations with adult roles . . . you know what I mean, right? You can say that for me."

Is there anyone whose made this transition successfully? "River Phoenix. . . . it's not necessarily the transition that I respect most, but (his) staying there with good parts and good films and just hacking away at it slowly and getting the respect as an adult actor now."

Suddenly DiCaprio darts across the room and grabs a highlighted copy of a fax--his favorite article ever written about him--and starts reading.

"I'll just say this to you, OK?" he says, reading what he said in the earlier article: " 'You know, when I was doing 'Growing Pains' I had quite a teen following. For a while, I was third in fan mail or something like that. To tell you the truth, I don't like that. Being the hunk-of-the month annoys me. They bring you in like a piece of meat, saying, 'Here's the next cute kid.' And it could ruin your career, you get washed up really fast. I'm looking for longevity.

" 'I insist on keeping a level head. I don't care about being a star. Anybody can be a star with a little makeup and a music video. I'm concerned about being an actor. ' "

He reads his own lines very well. Of course, this is a character he can really identify with.

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A Powerfully Complex 'Boy's Life' : This Boy Is Taking His Acting Life Very Seriously

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"This Boy's Life" is bringing 18-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio flattering reviews and job offers. So, he'd just as soon like to forget his more humble beginnings as an actor. "Why does everyone know about this? Yeah, it was my first movie and uh . . . is this in like the press package thing?

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Leonardo plays the lead role of Jack Dawson, a handsome, funny, uninhibited and affectionate man, which reinforces his image as a teenage icon and romantic lead.

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Titanic is a 1997 American romantic disaster film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. Incorporating both historical and fictionalized aspects, it is based on accounts of the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet star as members of different social classes who fall in love during the ship's maiden voyage, with Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Victor Garber, David Warner, Suzy Amis and Bill Paxton in supporting roles.

Cameron's inspiration for the film came from his fascination with shipwrecks. He felt a love story interspersed with the human loss would be essential to convey the emotional impact of the disaster. Production began on September 1, 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the Titanic wreck. The modern scenes on the research vesselwere shot on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, which Cameron had used as a base when filming the wreck. Scale models, computer-generated imagery and a reconstruction of the Titanic built at Baja Studios were used to recreate the sinking. The film was co-financed by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox; Paramount handled distribution in North America while 20th Century Fox released the film internationally. Titanic was the most expensive film ever made at the time, with a production budget of $200 million. Filming took place from July 1996 to March 1997.

Titanic was released on December 19, 1997. It was praised for its visual effects, performances (particularly those of DiCaprio, Winslet, and Stuart), production values, direction, score, cinematography, story and emotional depth. Among other awards, it was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won 11, including Best Picture and Best Director, tying (1959) for the most Academy Awards won by a film. With an initial worldwide gross of over $1.84 billion, Titanic was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark. It was the highest-grossing film of all time until Cameron's next film, (2009), surpassed it in 2010. Income from the initial theatrical release, retail video and soundtrack sales and US broadcast rights exceeded $3.2 billion. A number of re-releases have pushed the film's worldwide theatrical total to $2.264 billion, making it the second film to gross more than $2 billion worldwide after Avatar. In 2017, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In 1996, aboard the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, Brock Lovett and his team search the wreck of RMS Titanic. They recover a safe they hope contains a necklace with a large diamond known as the Heart of the Ocean. Instead, they find only a drawing of a young nude woman wearing the necklace. The sketch is dated April 14, 1912, the same day the Titanic struck the iceberg that caused it to sink. After viewing a television news story about the discovery, centenarian Rose Dawson Calvert contacts Lovett, identifying herself as the woman in the drawing. Hoping she can help locate the necklace, Lovett brings Rose aboard Keldysh, where she recounts her experiences as a Titanic passenger.

In 1912 Southampton, 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater, her wealthy fiancé Caledon "Cal" Hockley and Rose's widowed mother Ruth board the Titanic. Ruth emphasizes that Rose's marriage to Cal will resolve the family's financial problems and maintain their upper-class status. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson, a poor young artist, wins a third-class Titanic ticket in a poker game. After setting sail, Rose, distraught over her loveless engagement, climbs over the stern railing, intending to commit suicide. Jack coaxes her back onto the deck and they develop a friendship. Jack soon admits that he has feelings for Rose. When Cal and Ruth object, Rose rejects Jack's attentions, but returns to him after realizing she has fallen in love.

Rose brings Jack to her state room and requests he draw her nude, wearing only the Heart of the Ocean. They later evade Cal's servant, Lovejoy, and have sex in a Renault Towncar inside the cargo hold. On the forward deck, they witness the ship's collision with an iceberg and overhear its officers discussing its seriousness. Cal discovers Jack's sketch and an insulting note from Rose in his safe, along with the necklace. When Jack and Rose return to warn the others about the collision, Cal has Lovejoy slip the necklace into Jack's pocket to frame him for theft. Jack is confined in the master-at-arms' office. Cal puts the necklace into his own overcoat pocket.

With the ship sinking, the crew prioritize women and children for evacuation. Rose finds and frees Jack, and they make it back to the deck, where Cal and Jack urge Rose to board a lifeboat. Intending to save himself, Cal lies that he will get Jack safely off the ship and wraps his overcoat around Rose. As her lifeboat is lowered, Rose, unable to abandon Jack, jumps back onto the ship. Cal grabs Lovejoy's pistol and chases Jack and Rose, but they escape. Cal realizes the necklace is still in the coat he gave Rose. He poses as a lost child's father to board a lifeboat.

Jack and Rose return to the deck. The ship's stern is rising as the flooded bow sinks; the two desperately cling to the stern rail. The upended ship breaks in half and the bow section sinks. The stern slams back onto the ocean, upends again and sinks. In the freezing water, Jack helps Rose onto a wood transom panel among the debris, buoyant enough only for one person, and makes her promise to survive. Jack dies of cold shock, but Rose is among six people saved by the one returning lifeboat. RMS Carpathia rescues the survivors. Rose avoids Cal and her mother by hiding among the steerage passengers and giving her name as Rose Dawson. Still wearing Cal's overcoat, she discovers the necklace tucked inside the pocket.

In the present, Rose says she heard that Cal committed suicide after losing his fortune in the 1929 Wall Street crash. Lovett abandons his search after hearing Rose's story. Alone on the stern of Keldysh, Rose takes the Heart of the Ocean, which has been in her possession all along, and drops it into the sea over the wreck site. While she is seemingly asleep in her bed, her photos on the dresser depict a life of freedom and adventure inspired by Jack. A young Rose reunites with Jack at the Titanic's Grand Staircase, applauded by those who died that night.

Fictional characters

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson. Cameron said he needed the cast to feel they were really on the Titanic, to relive its liveliness, and "to take that energy and give it to Jack, ... an artist who is able to have his heart soar". Jack is portrayed as an itinerant, poor orphan from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, who has travelled the world, including Paris. He wins two third-class tickets for the Titanic in a poker game and travels with his friend Fabrizio. He is attracted to Rose at first sight. Her fiancé's invitation to dine with them the next evening enables Jack to mix with the first-class passengers for a night. Cameron's original choice for the role was River Phoenix, however he died in 1993. Though established actors like Matthew McConaughey, Chris O'Donnell, Billy Crudup, and Stephen Dorff were considered, Cameron felt they were too old for the part of a 20-year-old. Tom Cruise was interested, but his asking price was too high. Cameron considered Jared Leto for the role, but Leto refused to audition. Jeremy Sisto did a series of screen tests with Winslet and three other actresses vying for the role of Rose. DiCaprio, 21 years old at the time, was brought to Cameron's attention by casting director Mali Finn. Initially, he did not want the role and refused to read his first romantic scene. Cameron said, "He read it once, then started goofing around, and I could never get him to focus on it again. But for one split second, a shaft of light came down from the heavens and lit up the forest." Cameron strongly believed in DiCaprio's acting ability and told him, "Look, I'm not going to make this guy brooding and neurotic. I'm not going to give him a tic and a limp and all the things you want." Cameron envisioned the character as being like those played by James Stewart or Gregory Peck. Although Jack Dawson was a fictional character, in Fairview Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where 121 victims are buried, there is a grave labeled "J. Dawson". The producers did not know of the real J. Dawson until after the film was released.

Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater. Cameron said Winslet "had the thing that you look for" and that there was "a quality in her face, in her eyes" that he "just knew people would be ready to go the distance with her". Rose is a 17-year-old girl from Philadelphia, who is forced into an engagement to 30-year-old Cal Hockley so she and her mother, Ruth, can maintain their high-class status after her father's death had left the family debt-ridden. Rose boards Titanic with Cal and Ruth, as a first-class passenger, and meets Jack. Winslet said of her character, "She has got a lot to give, and she's got a very open heart. And she wants to explore and adventure the world, but she [feels] that's not going to happen." Gwyneth Paltrow, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes (who had previously worked with DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet the previous year), Gabrielle Anwar, and Reese Witherspoon had been considered for the role. When they turned it down, Winslet campaigned heavily for the role. She sent Cameron daily notes from England, which led Cameron to invite her to Hollywood for auditions. As with DiCaprio, casting director Mali Finn originally brought her to Cameron's attention. When looking for a Rose, Cameron described the character as "an Audrey Hepburn type" and was initially uncertain about casting Winslet even after her screen test impressed him. After she screen tested with DiCaprio, Winslet was so thoroughly impressed with him, that she whispered to Cameron, "He's great. Even if you don't pick me, pick him." Winslet sent Cameron a single rose with a card signed, "From Your Rose", and lobbied him by phone. "You don't understand!" she pleaded one day when she reached him by mobile phone in his Humvee. "I am Rose! I don't know why you're even seeing anyone else!" Her persistence, as well as her talent, eventually convinced him to cast her in the role.

Billy Zane as Caledon "Cal" Hockley, Rose's arrogant and snobbish 30-year-old fiancé, who is the heir to a Pittsburgh steel fortune. He is resentful of Rose's affection for Jack. Cameron initially considered Michael Biehn, who he had previously collaborated with on , and , for the role, before offering it to Matthew McConaughey, and Rob Lowe said he pursued it.

Frances Fisher as Ruth DeWitt Bukater, Rose's widowed mother, who arranges Rose's engagement to Cal to maintain her family's high-society status. Like many aristocratic passengers portrayed in the film, her disposition is elitist and frivolous. She loves her daughter but believes that social position is more important than having a loving marriage. She strongly dislikes Jack, even though he saved her daughter's life.

Gloria Stuart as the modern-day Rose Dawson Calvert. Rose narrates the film in a framing device. Cameron stated, "In order to see the present and the past, I decided to create a fictional survivor who is [close to] 101 years, and she connects us in a way through history." The 100-year-old Rose gives Lovett information regarding the "Heart of the Ocean" after he discovers a nude drawing of her in the wreck. She shares the story of her time aboard the ship, and speaks about her relationship with Jack for the first time since the sinking. At 87, Stuart had to be made up to look older for the role. Of casting Stuart, Cameron stated, "My casting director found her. She was sent out on a mission to find retired actresses from the Golden Age of the thirties and forties." Cameron said that he did not know who Stuart was, and Fay Wray was also considered for the role. "But [Stuart] was just so into it, and so lucid, and had such a great spirit. And I saw the connection between her spirit and [Winslet's] spirit," stated Cameron. "I saw this joie de vivre in both of them, that I thought the audience would be able to make that cognitive leap that it's the same person."

Bill Paxton as Brock Lovett, a treasure hunter looking for the "Heart of the Ocean" in the wreck of the Titanic in the present. Time and funding for his expedition are running out. He reflects at the film's conclusion that, despite thinking about Titanic for three years, he has never understood it until he hears Rose's story.

Suzy Amis as Lizzy Calvert. Rose's granddaughter, who accompanies her when she visits Lovett on the ship and learns of her grandmother's romantic past with Jack Dawson.

Danny Nucci as Fabrizio. Jack's Italian best friend, who boards Titanic with him after Jack wins two tickets in a poker game. Fabrizio fails to board a lifeboat when the Titanic sinks and is killed when one of the ship's funnels breaks and crashes into the water, crushing him and several other passengers to death.

David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy, an ex-Pinkerton constable and Cal's English valet and bodyguard. He monitors Rose and is suspicious about the circumstances surrounding Jack rescuing her. He dies when the Titanic splits in half, causing him to fall into a massive opening. Warner had appeared in the 1979 TV miniseries S.O.S. Titanic.

Jason Barry as Tommy Ryan, an Irish third-class passenger who befriends Jack and Fabrizio. Tommy is killed when he is accidentally pushed forward and shot by a panicked First Officer Murdoch.

Historical characters

Although not intended to be an entirely accurate depiction of events, the film includes portrayals of various historical figures:

The real Margaret Brown (right) providing Captain Arthur Henry Rostron with an award for his service in the rescue of Titanic's surviving passengers.

Kathy Bates as Margaret "Molly" Brown. Brown is looked down upon by other first-class women, including Ruth, as "vulgar" and "new money". She is friendly to Jack and lends him a suit of evening clothes (bought for her son) when he is invited to dinner in the first-class dining saloon. She was dubbed "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" by historians because, with the support of other women, she commandeered Lifeboat 6 from Quartermaster Robert Hichens.[32] Some aspects of this altercation are portrayed in Cameron's film. Reba McEntire was offered the role, but had to turn it down, because it conflicted with her touring schedule.[33]

Victor Garber as Thomas Andrews: The ship's builder, Andrews is portrayed as a kind, decent man who is modest about his grand achievement. After the collision, he tries to convince the others, particularly Ismay, that it is a "mathematical certainty" that the ship will sink. He is depicted during the sinking of the ship as standing next to the clock in the first-class smoking room, lamenting his failure to build a strong and safe ship. Although this has become one of the most famous legends of the sinking of the Titanic, this story, which was published in a 1912 book (Thomas Andrews: Shipbuilder) and therefore perpetuated, came from John Stewart, a steward on the ship who in fact left the ship in boat no.15 at approximately 1:40 a.m.[34] There were testimonies of sightings of Andrews after that moment.[34] It appears that Andrews stayed in the smoking room for some time to gather his thoughts, then he continued assisting with the evacuation.[34]

Crew of the Olympic, 1911. Left: First Officer William M. Murdoch. Right: Captain Edward J. Smith.

Bernard Hill as Captain Edward John Smith. Smith planned to make the Titanic his final voyage before retiring. He retreats into the wheelhouse on the bridge as the ship sinks, dying when the windows burst from the water pressure whilst he clings to the ship's wheel. There are conflicting accounts as to whether he died in this manner or later froze to death in the water near the capsized collapsible lifeboat "B".[35]

Jonathan Hyde as J. Bruce Ismay, White Star Line's ignorant, boorish managing director. Ismay influences Captain Smith to go faster with the prospect of an earlier arrival in New York and favorable press attention; while this appears in popular portrayals of the disaster, it is unsupported by evidence.[36][37] After the collision, he struggles to comprehend that his "unsinkable" ship is doomed. Ismay later boards Collapsible C (one of the last lifeboats to leave the ship) just before it is lowered. He was branded a coward by the press and public for surviving the disaster while many women and children had drowned.

Eric Braeden as John Jacob Astor IV, a first-class passenger and the richest man on the ship. The film depicts Astor and his 18-year-old wife Madeleine (Charlotte Chatton) as being introduced to Jack by Rose in the first-class dining saloon. During the introduction, Astor asks if Jack is connected to the "Boston Dawsons", a question Jack deflects by saying that he is instead affiliated with the Chippewa Falls Dawsons. Astor is last seen as the Grand Staircase glass dome implodes and water surges in.

Bernard Fox as Colonel Archibald Gracie IV. The film depicts Gracie making a comment to Cal that "women and machinery don't mix", and congratulating Jack for saving Rose from falling off the ship, though he is unaware that it was a suicide attempt. He is later seen offering to lead Jack and Rose to the remaining lifeboats during the sinking. Fox had portrayed Frederick Fleet in the 1958 film A Night to Remember.

Michael Ensign as Benjamin Guggenheim, a mining magnate traveling in first-class. He shows off his French mistress Madame Aubert (Fannie Brett) to his fellow passengers while his wife and three daughters wait for him at home. When Jack joins the other first-class passengers for dinner after his rescue of Rose, Guggenheim refers to him as a "bohemian". He is seen in the flooding Grand Staircase during the sinking, saying he is prepared to go down as a gentleman.

Wallace Hartley. Titanic's bandmaster and violinist.

Jonathan Evans-Jones as Wallace Hartley, the ship's bandmaster and violinist who plays uplifting music with his colleagues on the boat deck as the ship sinks. As the final plunge begins, he leads the band in a final performance of "Nearer, My God, to Thee", to the tune of Bethany,[38][39] and dies in the sinking.

Mark Lindsay Chapman as Chief Officer Henry Wilde, the ship's chief officer, who lets Cal on board a lifeboat because he has a child in his arms. Before he dies, he tries to get the boats to return to the sinking site to rescue passengers by blowing his whistle. After he freezes to death, Rose uses his whistle to attract the attention of Fifth Officer Lowe, which leads to her rescue.

Ewan Stewart as First Officer William Murdoch, the officer in charge of the bridge when the Titanic struck the iceberg. During a rush for the lifeboats, Murdoch shoots Tommy Ryan, as well as another passenger, in a momentary panic, then commits suicide by shooting himself in the head. When Murdoch's nephew Scott saw the film, he objected to his uncle's portrayal as damaging to Murdoch's heroic reputation.[40] A few months later, Fox vice-president Scott Neeson went to Dalbeattie, Scotland, where Murdoch lived, to deliver a personal apology, and also presented a £5000 donation to Dalbeattie High School to boost the school's William Murdoch Memorial Prize.[41] Cameron apologized on the DVD commentary, but stated that there were officers who fired gunshots to enforce the "women and children first" policy. According to Cameron, his depiction of Murdoch is that of an "honorable man," not of a man "gone bad" or of a "cowardly murderer." He added, "I'm not sure you'd find that same sense of responsibility and total devotion to duty today. This guy had half of his lifeboats launched before his counterpart on the port side had even launched one. That says something about character and heroism."[43]

Jonathan Phillips as Second Officer Charles Lightoller. Lightoller took charge of the port side evacuation. The film depicts Lightoller informing Captain Smith that it will be difficult to see icebergs without breaking water, and following the collision, suggesting the crew should begin boarding women and children to the lifeboats. He is seen brandishing a gun and threatening to use it to keep order. He can be seen on top of Collapsible B when the first funnel collapses. Lightoller was the most senior officer to have survived the disaster.

Film producer Kevin De La Noy as Third Officer Herbert Pitman, who also survived the sinking.

Simon Crane as Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall, the officer in charge of firing flares and manning Lifeboat 2 during the sinking. He is shown on the bridge wings helping the seamen firing the flares.

Ioan Gruffudd as Fifth Officer Harold Lowe, the only officer to lead a lifeboat to retrieve survivors of the sinking from the icy waters. The film depicts Lowe rescuing Rose.

Edward Fletcher as Sixth Officer James Moody, the only junior officer to have died in the sinking. The film depicts Moody admitting Jack and Fabrizio onto the ship only moments before it departs from Southampton. Moody is later shown following Murdoch's orders to put the ship to full speed ahead, and informs Murdoch about the iceberg. He is last seen clinging to one of the davits on the starboard side after having unsuccessfully attempted to launch collapsible A.

James Lancaster as Father Thomas Byles, a second-class passenger and a Catholic priest from England. He is portrayed praying and consoling passengers during the ship's final moments.

Lew Palter and Elsa Raven as Isidor and Ida Straus. Isidor is a former owner of R.H. Macy and Company, a former congressman from New York, and a member of the New York and New Jersey Bridge Commission. During the sinking, the couple were offered seats on a lifeboat together. Isidor refused to go before all women and children have been evacuated, and urged his wife Ida to go ahead. Ida is portrayed refusing to board the lifeboat, saying that she will honor her wedding pledge by staying with Isidor. They are last seen lying on their bed, embracing each other as water fills their stateroom.

Martin Jarvis as Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, a Scottish baronet who is rescued in Lifeboat 1. Lifeboats 1 and 2 were emergency boats with a capacity of 40. Situated at the forward end of the boat deck, these were kept ready to launch in case of a person falling overboard. On the night of the disaster, Lifeboat 1 was the fourth to be launched, with 12 people aboard, including Duff-Gordon, his wife and her secretary. The baronet was much criticized for his conduct during the incident. It was suggested that he had boarded the emergency boat in violation of the "women and children first" policy, and that the boat had failed to return to rescue those struggling in the water. He offered five pounds to each of the lifeboat's crew, which those critical of his conduct viewed as a bribe. The Duff-Gordons at the time (and his wife's secretary in a letter written at the time and rediscovered in 2007) stated that there had been no women or children waiting to board in the vicinity of the launching of their boat; there is confirmation that lifeboat 1 of the Titanic was almost empty, and that First Officer William Murdoch was apparently glad to offer Duff-Gordon and his wife and her secretary a place (simply to fill it) after they had asked if they could get on. Duff-Gordon denied that his offer of money to the lifeboat crew represented a bribe. The British Board of Trade's inquiry into the disaster accepted Duff-Gordon's denial of bribing the crew, but maintained that, if the emergency boat had rowed towards the people who were in the water, it might very well have been able to rescue some of them.[44][45]

Rosalind Ayres as Lady Duff-Gordon, a world-famous fashion designer and Sir Cosmo's wife. She is rescued in Lifeboat 1 with her husband. They never lived down rumors that they had forbidden the lifeboat's crew to return to the wreck site in case they would be swamped.[46][47][48]

Rochelle Rose as Noël Leslie, Countess of Rothes. The Countess is shown to be friendly with Cal and the DeWitt Bukaters. Despite being of a higher status in society than Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff-Gordon, she is kind, and helps row the boat and even looks after the steerage passengers.

Scott G. Anderson as Frederick Fleet, the lookout who saw the iceberg. Fleet escapes the sinking ship aboard Lifeboat 6.

Paul Brightwell as Quartermaster Robert Hichens, one of the six quartermasters and at the ship's wheel at the time of collision. He is in charge of lifeboat 6. He refuses to go back and pick up survivors after the sinking and eventually the boat is commandeered by Molly Brown.

Martin East as Reginald Lee, the other lookout in the crow's nest. He survives the sinking.

Gregory Cooke as Jack Phillips, the senior wireless operator whom Captain Smith ordered to send the distress signal.

Craig Kelly as Harold Bride, a junior wireless operator.

Liam Tuohy as Chief Baker Charles Joughin. The baker appears in the film helping Rose stand up after she falls, following her and Jack to the ship's stern, and finally hanging onto the ship's railing as it sinks, drinking brandy from a flask. According to the real Joughin's testimony, he rode the ship down and stepped into the water without getting his hair wet. He also admitted to hardly feeling the cold, most likely thanks to alcohol.[49] In a deleted scene, he's shown throwing deckchairs overboard before taking a drink from his bottle.[50][51]

Terry Forrestal as Chief Engineer Joseph G. Bell: Bell and his men worked until the last minute to keep the lights and the power on in order for distress signals to get out. Bell and all of the engineers died in the bowels of the Titanic.

Several crew members of the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh appear, including Anatoly Sagalevich, the creator and pilot of the self-propelled Deep Submergence Vehicle. Anders Falk, who filmed a documentary about the film's sets for the Titanic Historical Society, makes a cameo appearance in the film as a Swedish immigrant whom Jack Dawson meets when he enters his cabin; Edward Kamuda and Karen Kamuda, then President and Vice President of the Society, who served as film consultants, were cast as extras in the film.

Pre-production

Writing and inspiration

Director, writer and producer James Cameron (pictured in 2000)

The story could not have been written better had it been fiction...The juxtaposition of rich and poor, the gender roles played out unto death ( women first), the stoicism and nobility of a bygone age, the magnificence of the great ship matched in scale only by the folly of the men who drove her hell-bent through the darkness. And above all the lesson: that life is uncertain, the future unknowable... the unthinkable possible.

James Cameron has long had a fascination with shipwrecks, and for him Titanic was "the Mount Everest of shipwrecks". He was almost past the point in his life when he felt he could consider an undersea expedition, but said he still had "a mental restlessness" to live the life he had turned away from when he switched from the sciences to the arts in college. When an IMAX film, , was made from footage shot of the Titanic wreck, Cameron decided to seek Hollywood funding for his own expedition. It was "not because I particularly wanted to make the movie," Cameron said. "I wanted to dive to the shipwreck."

Cameron wrote a scriptment for a Titanic film, met with 20th Century Fox executives including Peter Chernin, and pitched it as "Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic". Cameron said the executives were unconvinced of the commercial potential, and had instead hoped for action scenes similar to his previous films. They approved the project as they hoped for a long-term relationship with Cameron.

Cameron convinced Fox to promote the film based on the publicity afforded by shooting the Titanic wreck, and organized several dives over a period of two years. He also convinced Fox that shooting the real wreck for the film scenes, instead of simulating it with special effects, would provide value: "We can either do [the shots] with elaborate models and motion control shots and CG and all that, which will cost X amount of money - or we can spend X plus 30 per cent and actually go shoot it at the real wreck."

The crew shot at the wreck in the Atlantic Ocean 12 times in 1995. The work was risky, as the water pressure could kill the crew if there were a tiny flaw in the submersible structure. Additionally, adverse conditions prevented Cameron from getting footage. During one dive, one of the submersibles collided with Titanic's hull, damaging both sub and ship, and leaving fragments of the submersible's propeller shroud scattered around the superstructure. The external bulkhead of the captain's quarters collapsed, exposing the interior, and the area around the entrance to the Grand Staircase was damaged.

Descending to the site emphasized to the crew that the Titanic disaster was not simply a story but a real event with real loss of life. Cameron said: "Working around the wreck for so much time, you get such a strong sense of the profound sadness and injustice of it, and the message of it." He felt a "great mantle of responsibility" to convey the emotional message of the story, as he was aware there might never be another filmmaker to visit the wreck.

Cameron felt the Titanic sinking was "like a great novel that really happened", but that the event had become a mere morality tale; the film would give audiences the experience of living the history. The treasure hunter Brock Lovett represented those who never connected with the human element of the tragedy. He believed that the romance of Jack and Rose would be the most engaging element: when their love is finally destroyed, the audience would mourn the loss. He said: "All my films are love stories, but in Titanic I finally got the balance right. It's not a disaster film. It's a love story with a fastidious overlay of real history."

After filming the underwater shots, Cameron began writing the screenplay. He wanted to honor the people who died, and spent six months researching the Titanic's crew and passengers. He created a detailed timeline of the events of the voyage and sinking and had it verified by historical experts. From the beginning of the shoot, the team had "a very clear picture" of what happened on the ship. Cameron said "That set the bar higher in a way - it elevated the movie in a sense. We wanted this to be a definitive visualization of this moment in history as if you'd gone back in a time machine and shot it." Cameron was influenced by the 1958 British film about Titanic, A Night to Remember, which he had seen as a youth. He liberally copied some dialogue and scenes, including the lively party of the passengers in steerage, and the musicians playing on the deck during the sinking.

Cameron framed the romance with the elderly Rose to make the intervening years palpable and poignant. While Winslet and Stuart believed Rose dies at the end of the film, Cameron said "the answer has to be something you supply personally; individually".

Scale modeling

The reconstruction of Titanic. The blueprints were supplied by the original ship's builder and Cameron tried to make the ship as detailed and accurate as possible.[65][66]

Harland & Wolff, Titanic's builders, opened their private archives to the crew, sharing blueprints that were previously thought lost. For the ship's interiors, production designer Peter Lamont's team looked for artifacts from the era. The newness of the ship meant every prop had to be made from scratch. Fox acquired 40 acres of waterfront south of Playas de Rosarito in Mexico and began building a new studio on May 31, 1996. A horizon tank of 17 million gallons was built for the exterior of the reconstructed ship, providing 270 degrees of ocean view. The ship was built to full scale, but Lamont removed redundant sections on the superstructure and forward well deck for the ship to fit in the tank, with the remaining sections filled with digital models. The lifeboats and funnels were shrunk by ten percent. The boat deck and A-deck were working sets, but the rest of the ship was steel plating. Within was a 50-foot lifting platform for the ship to tilt during the sinking sequences. The 60-foot 1/8th scale model of the stern section was designed by the naval architect Jay Kantola using plans of the Titanic's sister ship RMS Olympic. Above the model was a 162-foot-tall (49 m) tower crane on 600 feet (180 m) of rail track, acting as a combined construction, lighting, and camera platform.

The sets representing the interior rooms of the Titanic were reproduced exactly using photographs and plans from the Titanic's builders. The Grand Staircase, which features prominently in the film, was recreated to a high standard, though it was widened 30% compared to the original and reinforced with steel girders. Craftsmen from Mexico and Britain sculpted the ornate paneling and plasterwork based on Titanic's original designs. The carpeting, upholstery, individual pieces of furniture, light fixtures, chairs, cutlery and crockery with the White Star Line crest on each piece were among the objects recreated according to original designs. Cameron hired two Titanic historians, Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, to authenticate the historical detail.

Production

Principal photography began on July 31, 1996 at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with the modern-day expedition scenes aboard the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh. In September 1996, the production moved to the newly built Fox Baja Studios in Rosarito, Mexico, where a full-scale Titanic had been constructed. The poop deck was built on a hinge that could rise from zero to 90 degrees in a few seconds, just as the ship's stern rose during the sinking. For the safety of the stuntmen, many props were made of foam rubber. By November 15, the boarding scenes were being shot. Cameron built his Titanic on the starboard side as a study of weather data revealed it was a prevailing north-to-south wind, which blew the funnel smoke aft. This posed a problem for shooting the ship's departure from Southampton, as it was docked on its port side. Implementation of written directions, as well as props and costumes, had to be reversed; for example, if someone walked to their right in the script, they had to walk left during shooting. In post-production, the film was flipped to the correct direction. A full-time etiquette coach was hired to instruct the cast in the manners of the upper class gentility in 1912. Despite this, several critics noted anachronisms in the film.

Cameron's sketch of Rose wearing the Heart of the Ocean. The scene was one of the first shot, as the main set was not ready.[30]

Cameron sketched Jack's portrait of Rose; Winslet posed in a bathing suit. Cameron felt the scene had a backdrop of repression and freedom: "You know what it means for her, the freedom she must be feeling. It's kind of exhilarating for that reason," he said. The sketching scene was DiCaprio and Winslet's first scene together. "It wasn't by any kind of design, although I couldn't have designed it better. There's a nervousness and an energy and a hesitance in them," Cameron stated. "They had rehearsed together, but they hadn't shot anything together. If I'd had a choice, I probably would have preferred to put it deeper into the body of the shoot." Cameron said he and his crew "were just trying to find things to shoot" because the big set "wasn't ready for months, so we were scrambling around trying to fill in anything we could get to shoot." Cameron felt the final scene worked well.

The shoot was an arduous experience that "cemented Cameron's formidable reputation as 'the scariest man in Hollywood". He became known as an "uncompromising, hard-charging perfectionist" and a "300-decibel screamer, a modern-day Captain Bligh with a megaphone and walkie-talkie, swooping down into people's faces on a 162ft crane". Winslet chipped a bone in her elbow during filming and had been worried that she would drown in the 17m-gallon water tank in which the ship would sink. "There were times when I was genuinely frightened of him. Jim has a temper like you wouldn't believe," she said. "'God damn it!' he would yell at some poor crew member, 'That's exactly what I didn't want!'" Bill Paxton was familiar with Cameron's work ethic from his earlier experience, and said: "There were a lot of people on the set. Jim is not one of those guys who has the time to win hearts and minds." The crew felt Cameron had an evil alter ego and so nicknamed him "Mij" (Jim spelled backwards). In response to the criticism, Cameron said, "Film-making is war. A great battle between business and aesthetics." More than 800 crew members worked on the film, a large number for any Hollywood production.

On August 9, 1996, during the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh shoot in Canada, an unknown person, suspected to be a crew member, put the dissociative drug PCP into the soup that Cameron and various others ate one night in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. It sent more than 50 people to the hospital. Paxton and Cameron ate the soup and went to the hospital but Paxton decided to leave, telling Cameron "Jim, I'm not gonna hang out here, this is bedlam. I'm gonna ... wander back down to the set and just drink a case of beer." "There were people just rolling around, completely out of it. Some of them said they were seeing streaks and psychedelics," said actor Lewis Abernathy. Cameron managed to vomit before the drug took a full hold. Abernathy was shocked at the way he looked. "One eye was completely red, like the Terminator eye. A pupil, no iris, beet red. The other eye looked like he'd been sniffing glue since he was four." The Nova Scotia Department of Health confirmed that the soup had contained PCP on August 27, and the Halifax Regional Police Service announced a criminal investigation the next day. The investigation was closed in February 1999. The person behind the poisoning was never caught.

The filming schedule was intended to last 138 days but grew to 160 (filming officially wrapped on March 23, 1997). Many cast members came down with colds, flu, or kidney infections after spending hours in cold water, including Winslet. In the end, she decided she would not work with Cameron again unless she earned "a lot of money". Several others left the production, and three stuntmen broke their bones, but the Screen Actors Guild decided, following an investigation, that nothing was inherently unsafe about the set. Additionally, DiCaprio said there was no point when he felt he was in danger during filming. Cameron believed in a passionate work ethic and never apologized for the way he ran his sets, although he acknowledged:

I'm demanding, and I'm demanding on my crew. In terms of being kind of militaresque, I think there's an element of that in dealing with thousands of extras and big logistics and keeping people safe. I think you have to have a fairly strict methodology in dealing with a large number of people.

The costs of filming Titanic ballooned and eventually reached $200 million, a bit over $1 million per minute of screen time. Fox executives panicked and suggested an hour of specific cuts from the three-hour film. They argued the extended length would mean fewer showings, thus less revenue, even though long epics are more likely to help directors win Oscars. Cameron refused, telling Fox, "You want to cut my movie? You're going to have to fire me! You want to fire me? You're going to have to kill me!" The executives did not want to start over, because it would mean the loss of their entire investment. The executives initially rejected Cameron's offer to forfeit his share of the profits as an empty gesture, as they predicted profits would be unlikely. Worried about the mounting costs, Fox wanted to find a partner studio to co-finance the film; Fox approached Paramount Pictures in May 1996, and the two studios agreed to split the costs and distribution rights. Fox retained the international distribution rights and sold the domestic rights to Paramount in return for $65 million, in an effort to recoup their investment.

Cameron explained forfeiting his share as complex. "...the short version is that the film cost proportionally much more than and Those films went up seven or eight percent from the initial budget. Titanic also had a large budget to begin with, but it went up a lot more," he said. "As the producer and director, I take responsibility for the studio that's writing the checks, so I made it less painful for them. I did that on two different occasions. They didn't force me to do it; they were glad that I did." Amidst the film's successful box office run, a Fox executive, William Mechanic, commented that "Jim Cameron told us we could have an expensive bad movie or a more expensive potentially great movie. We made our judgment. And we made the best choice."

Post-production

Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects, and enlisted Digital Domain and Pacific Data Images to continue the developments in digital technology he pioneered on and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Many previous films about Titanic shot water in slow motion, which did not look wholly convincing. Cameron encouraged his crew to shoot their 45-foot-long (14 m) miniature of the ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line". Afterwards, digital water and smoke were added, as were extras captured on a motion capture stage. Visual effects supervisor Rob Legato scanned the faces of many actors, including himself and his children, for the digital extras and stuntmen. There was also a 65-foot-long (20 m) model of the ship's stern that could break in two repeatedly, the only miniature to be used in water. For scenes set in the ship's engines, footage of the engines were composited with miniature support frames, and actors shot against a greenscreen. In order to save money, the first-class lounge was a miniature set incorporated into a greenscreen backdrop behind the actors. The miniature of the Lounge would later be crushed to simulate the destruction of the room and a scale model of a First-Class corridor flooded with jets of water while the camera pans out.

Unlike previous Titanic films, Cameron's retelling of the disaster showed the ship breaking into two pieces before sinking entirely. The scenes were an account of the moment's most likely outcome.

An enclosed 5,000,000-US-gallon (19,000,000 L) tank was used for sinking interiors, in which the entire set could be tilted into the water. In order to sink the Grand Staircase, 90,000 US gallons (340,000 L) of water were dumped into the set as it was lowered into the tank. Unexpectedly, the waterfall ripped the staircase from its steel-reinforced foundations, although no one was hurt. The 744-foot-long (227 m) exterior of Titanic had its first half lowered into the tank, but as the heaviest part of the ship it acted as a shock absorber against the water; to get the set into the water, Cameron had much of the set emptied and even smashed some of the promenade windows himself. After submerging the dining saloon, three days were spent shooting Lovett's ROV traversing the wreck in the present. The post-sinking scenes in the freezing Atlantic were shot in a 350,000-US-gallon (1,300,000 L) tank, where the frozen corpses were created by applying on actors a powder that crystallized when exposed to water, and wax was coated on hair and clothes.

The climactic scene, which features the breakup of the ship directly before it sinks as well as its final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic, involved a tilting full-sized set, 150 extras, and 100 stunt performers. Cameron criticized previous Titanic films for depicting the liner's final plunge as a graceful slide underwater. He "wanted to depict it as the terrifyingly chaotic event that it really was". When carrying out the sequence, people needed to fall off the increasingly tilting deck, plunging hundreds of feet below and bouncing off of railings and propellers on the way down. A few attempts to film this sequence with stunt people resulted in some minor injuries, and Cameron halted the more dangerous stunts. The risks were eventually minimized "by using computer-generated people for the dangerous falls". A Linux-based operating system was utilized for the creation of the effects.

Cameron said there were aspects of the Titanic story that seemed important in pre- and post-production but became less important as the film evolved. He omitted the SS Californian, the ship that was close to the Titanic the night she sank but had turned off its radio for the night, did not hear her crew's SOS calls, and did not respond to their distress flares. A scene involving the Californian was cut, according to Cameron, "because it focuses you back onto that world. If Titanic is powerful as a metaphor, as a microcosm, for the end of the world in a sense, then that world must be self-contained." He said its omission was not "a compromise to mainstream filmmaking" but "about emphasis, creating an emotional truth to the film".

During the first assembly cut, Cameron altered the ending. In the original version, Brock and Lizzy see the elderly Rose at the stern of the boat and fear she is going to commit suicide. Rose reveals that she had the Heart of the Ocean diamond all along but never sold it, to live on her own without Cal's money. She allows Brock to hold it but tells Brock that life is priceless and throws the diamond into the ocean. After accepting that treasure is worthless, Brock laughs at his stupidity. In the editing room, Cameron decided that by this point, the audience would no longer be interested in Brock Lovett and cut the scene, so that Rose is alone when she drops the diamond. He also did not want to disrupt the audience's melancholy after the Titanic's sinking. Paxton agreed that his scene with Brock's epiphany and laugh was unnecessary, saying "I would have shot heroin to make the scene work better... Our job was done by then... If you're smart and you take the ego and the narcissism out of it, you'll listen to the film, and the film will tell you what it needs and what it does not need."

The version used for the first test screening featured a fight between Jack and Lovejoy after Jack and Rose escape into the flooded dining saloon. The scene was written to give the film more suspense, and had Cal offering to give Lovejoy, his valet, the Heart of the Ocean if he can get it from Jack and Rose. Lovejoy goes after the pair in the sinking first-class dining room. Jack attacks him and smashes his head against a window; this is why Lovejoy has a gash later in the film. Test audiences said it would be unrealistic to risk one's life for wealth, and Cameron cut it for this reason, as well as for timing and pacing reasons. Many other scenes were cut for similar reasons.

Heart of the Ocean

For the Heart of the Ocean design, London-based jewelers Asprey & Garrard used cubic zirconias set in white gold to create an Edwardian-style necklace to be used as a prop in the film. The studio designed and produced three variations, very similar but unique and distinguishable in character. Two of them were used in the film while the third went unused until after the film had been released. The three necklaces are commonly known as the original prop, the J. Peterman necklace and the Asprey necklace.

The third and final design was not used in the film. After the film's success, Asprey & Garrard were commissioned to create an authentic Heart of the Ocean necklace using the original design. The result was a platinum-set, 171-carat (34.2 g) heart-shaped Ceylon sapphire surrounded by 103 diamonds. This design featured a much larger inverted pear-shaped Ceylon sapphire with a subtle cleft to resemble a heart. The chain for this necklace also featured a mix of round, pear, and marquise cut white diamonds. The bail also featured a heart cut white diamond with another round cut diamond attached to an inverted pear shape diamond which was then attached to the cage of the main stone. The necklace was donated to Sotheby's auction house in Beverly Hills for an auction benefiting the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and Southern California's Aid For AIDS. It was sold to an unidentified Asprey client for $1.4 million (equivalent to $2.62 million in 2023), under the agreement that Dion would wear it two nights later at the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony. Since then, this necklace has not been made available for public viewing.

Soundtrack

Cameron wrote Titanic while listening to the work of the Irish new-age musician Enya. After Enya declined an invitation to compose for the film, Cameron instead chose James Horner. The two had parted ways after a tumultuous working experience on but Titanic cemented a successful collaboration that lasted until Horner's death. For the vocals heard throughout the film, Horner chose the Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø, commonly known as "Sissel". Horner knew Sissel from her album Innerst i sjelen, and particularly liked how she sang "Eg veit i himmerik ei borg" ("I Know in Heaven There Is a Castle"). He tried around 30 singers before choosing Sissel.

Horner wrote the end theme, " My Heart Will Go On", in secret with Will Jennings because Cameron did not want any songs in the film. Céline Dion agreed to record a demo at the persuasion of her husband René Angélil. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song. After playing it several times, Cameron declared his approval, although worried that he would have been criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie". Cameron also wanted to appease anxious studio executives and "saw that a hit song from his movie could only be a positive factor in guaranteeing its completion".

The soundtrack was the best-selling album of 1998 with sales of over 27 million.

Initial screening

Distribution for the film was split between Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox; Paramount handling the distribution in the United States and Canada, and Fox handling the international release. Both studios expected Cameron to complete the film for a release on July 2, 1997. The film was to be released on this date "to exploit the lucrative summer season ticket sales when blockbuster films usually do better". In April, Cameron said the film's special effects were too complicated and that releasing the film on that date would not be possible. The studios considered pushing the film to late July or the first week of August, but Harrison Ford, whose film Air Force One was to be released on July 25, is reported to have informed Paramount, which had produced his lucrative Indiana Jones and franchises, that he would never work with them again if they released Titanic so close to his own film. On May 29, 1997, Paramount pushed back the release date to December 19, 1997. "This fueled speculation that the film itself was a disaster." A preview screening in Minneapolis on July 14 "generated positive reviews" and "[c]hatter on the internet was responsible for more favorable word of mouth about the [film]". This eventually led to more positive media coverage.

Cameron refused to hold the film's world premiere in Los Angeles. Paramount disagreed with Cameron's decision, but Fox acquiesced and went ahead and held the premiere on November 1, 1997, at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where reaction was described as "tepid" by The New York Times. Positive reviews started to appear back in the United States; the official Hollywood premiere occurred on December 14, 1997, where "the big movie stars who attended the opening were enthusiastically gushing about the film to the world media".

Including revenue from the 2012, 2017 and 2023 reissues, Titanic earned $674.3 million in North America and $1.583 billion in other countries, for a worldwide total of $2.257 billion. It became the highest-grossing film of all time worldwide in 1998, beating Jurassic Park (1993). The film remained so for twelve years, until (2009), also written and directed by Cameron, surpassed it in 2010. On March 1, 1998, it became the first film to earn more than $1 billion worldwide and on the weekend April 13-15, 2012-a century after the original vessel's foundering, Titanic became the second film to cross the $2 billion threshold during its 3D re-release. Box Office Mojo estimates that Titanic is the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time in North America when adjusting for ticket price inflation. The site also estimates that the film sold over 128 million tickets in the US in its initial theatrical run.

Titanic was the first foreign-language film to succeed in India, which claims to have the largest movie-going audience in the world. A Hindustan Times report attributes this to the film's similarities and shared themes with most Bollywood films.

Initial theatrical run

The film received steady attendance after opening in North America on Friday, December 19, 1997. By the end of that same weekend, theaters were beginning to sell out. The film earned $8,658,814 on its opening day and $28,638,131 over the opening weekend from 2,674 theaters, averaging to about $10,710 per venue, and ranking number one at the box office, ahead of , and the eighteenth James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies. It would go on to surpass The Godfather Part III's record for having the highest Christmas Day gross, generating a total of $9.2 million. For its second weekend, the film made $35.6 million, making it the biggest December weekend gross, surpassing Scream 2. By New Year's Day, Titanic had made over $120 million, had increased in popularity and theaters continued to sell out. In just 44 days, it became the fastest film to approach the $300 million mark at the domestic box office, surpassing the former record held by Jurassic Park, which took 67 days to do so. Titanic would hold this record until 1999 when it was taken by Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

Its highest grossing single day was Saturday, February 14, 1998, on which it earned $13,048,711, more than eight weeks after its North American debut. On March 14, it surpassed Star Wars as the highest-grossing film ever in North America. It stayed at number one for 15 consecutive weeks in North America, a record for any film. By April 1998, the film's number one spot would be overtaken by Lost in Space, dropping into second place. The film stayed in theaters in North America for almost 10 months before finally closing on Thursday, October 1, 1998, with a final domestic gross of $600,788,188, equivalent to $1140.3 million in 2023. Outside North America, the film made double its North American gross, generating $1,242,413,080 and accumulating a grand total of $1,843,201,268 worldwide from its initial theatrical run.

Commercial analysis

Before Titanic's release, various film critics predicted the film would be a significant disappointment at the box office, especially since it was the most expensive film ever made at the time. When it was shown to the press in autumn of 1997, "it was with massive forebodings", since the "people in charge of the screenings believed they were on the verge of losing their jobs - because of this great albatross of a picture on which, finally, two studios had to combine to share the great load of its making". Cameron also thought he was "headed for disaster" at one point during filming. "We labored the last six months on Titanic in the absolute knowledge that the studio would lose $100 million. It was a certainty," he stated. As the film neared release, "particular venom was spat at Cameron for what was seen as his hubris and monumental extravagance". A film critic for the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Cameron's overweening pride has come close to capsizing this project" and that the film was "a hackneyed, completely derivative copy of old Hollywood romances".

It's hard to forget the director on the stage of the Shrine Auditorium in LA, exultant, pumping a golden Oscar statuette into the air and shouting: "I'm the king of the world!" As everyone knew, that was the most famous line in Titanic, exclaimed by Leonardo DiCaprio's character as he leaned into the wind on the prow of the doomed vessel. Cameron's incantation of the line was a giant "eff off", in front of a television audience approaching a billion, to all the naysayers, especially those sitting right in front of him.

When the film became a success, with an unprecedented box-office performance, it was credited for being a love story that captured its viewers' emotions. The film was playing on 3,200 screens ten weeks after it opened, and out of its fifteen straight weeks on top of the charts, jumped 43% in total sales in its ninth week of release. It earned over $20 million for each of its first 10 weekends, and after 14 weeks was still bringing in more than $1 million on weekdays. 20th Century Fox estimated that seven percent of American teenage girls had seen Titanic twice by its fifth week. Although young women who saw the film several times and subsequently caused " Leo-Mania" were often credited with having primarily propelled the film to its all-time box office record, other reports have attributed the film's success to positive word of mouth and repeat viewership due to the love story combined with the ground-breaking special effects. The Hollywood Reporter estimated that after a combined production and promotion cost of $487 million, the film turned a net profit of $1.4 billion, with a modern profit of as much as $4 billion after ancillary sources.

Titanic's impact on men has also been especially credited. It is considered one of the films that make men cry, with MSNBC's Ian Hodder stating that men admire Jack's sense of adventure and his ambitious behavior to win over Rose, which contributes to their emotional attachment to Jack. The film's ability to make men cry was briefly parodied in the 2009 film Zombieland, where character Tallahassee ( Woody Harrelson), when recalling the death of his young son, states: "I haven't cried like that since Titanic."

In 2010, the BBC analyzed the stigma over men crying during Titanic and films in general. "Middle-aged men are not 'supposed' to cry during movies," stated Finlo Rohrer of the website, citing the ending of Titanic as having generated such tears, adding that "men, if they have felt weepy during [this film], have often tried to be surreptitious about it." Professor Mary Beth Oliver, of Penn State University, stated, "For many men, there is a great deal of pressure to avoid expression of 'female' emotions like sadness and fear. From a very young age, males are taught that it is inappropriate to cry, and these lessons are often accompanied by a great deal of ridicule when the lessons aren't followed." Rohrer said, "Indeed, some men who might sneer at the idea of crying during Titanic will readily admit to becoming choked up during Saving Private Ryan or " For men in general, "the idea of sacrifice for a 'brother' is a more suitable source of emotion".

Scott Meslow of The Atlantic stated while Titanic initially seems to need no defense, given its success, it is considered a film "for 15-year-old girls" by its main detractors. He argued that dismissing Titanic as fodder for teenage girls fails to consider the film's accomplishment: "that [this] grandiose, 3+ hour historical romantic drama is a film for everyone-including teenage boys." Meslow stated that despite the film being ranked high by males under the age of 18, matching the ratings for teenage boy-targeted films like , it is common for boys and men to deny liking Titanic. He acknowledged his own rejection of the film as a child while secretly loving it. "It's this collection of elements-the history, the romance, the action-that made (and continues to make) Titanic an irresistible proposition for audiences of all ages across the globe," he stated. " Titanic has flaws, but for all its legacy, it's better than its middlebrow reputation would have you believe. It's a great movie for 15-year-old girls, but that doesn't mean it's not a great movie for everyone else too."

Quotes in the film aided its popularity. Titanic's catchphrase "I'm the king of the world!" became one of the film industry's more popular quotations. According to Richard Harris, a psychology professor at Kansas State University, who studied why people like to cite films in social situations, using film quotations in everyday conversation is similar to telling a joke and a way to form solidarity with others. "People are doing it to feel good about themselves, to make others laugh, to make themselves laugh", he said.

Cameron explained the film's success as having significantly benefited from the experience of sharing. "When people have an experience that's very powerful in the movie theatre, they want to go share it. They want to grab their friend and bring them, so that they can enjoy it," he said. "They want to be the person to bring them the news that this is something worth having in their life. That's how Titanic worked." Media Awareness Network stated, "The normal repeat viewing rate for a blockbuster theatrical film is about 5%. The repeat rate for Titanic was over 20%." The box office receipts "were even more impressive" when factoring in "the film's 3-hour-and-14-minute length meant that it could only be shown three times a day compared to a normal movie's four showings". In response to this, "[m]any theatres started midnight showings and were rewarded with full houses until almost 3:30 am".

Titanic held the record for box office gross for 12 years. Cameron's follow-up film, , was considered the first film with a genuine chance at surpassing its worldwide gross, and did so in 2010. Various explanations for why the film was able to successfully challenge Titanic were given. For one, "Two-thirds of Titanic's haul was earned overseas, and Avatar [tracked] similarly... Avatar opened in 106 markets globally and was no. 1 in all of them" and the markets "such as Russia, where Titanic saw modest receipts in 1997 and 1998, are white-hot today" with "more screens and moviegoers" than ever before. Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, said that while Avatar may beat Titanic's revenue record, the film is unlikely to surpass Titanic in attendance. "Ticket prices were about $3 cheaper in the late 1990s." In December 2009, Cameron had stated, "I don't think it's realistic to try to topple Titanic off its perch. Some pretty good movies have come out in the last few years. Titanic just struck some kind of chord." In a January 2010 interview, he gave a different take on the matter once Avatar's performance was easier to predict, saying "It's gonna happen. It's just a matter of time,".

Author Alexandra Keller, when analyzing Titanic's success, stated that scholars could agree that the film's popularity "appears dependent on contemporary culture, on perceptions of history, on patterns of consumerism and globalization, as well as on those elements experienced filmgoers conventionally expect of juggernaut film events in the 1990s - awesome screen spectacle, expansive action, and, more rarely seen, engaging characters and epic drama."

Critical reception

Titanic garnered mostly positive reviews from film critics, and was positively reviewed by audiences and scholars, who commented on the film's cultural, historical, and political impacts. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 88% based on 255 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A mostly unqualified triumph for James Cameron, who offers a dizzying blend of spectacular visuals and old-fashioned melodrama." Metacritic, which assigned a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 35 critics, reports the film has "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade, one of fewer than 60 films in the history of the service from 1982 to 2011 to earn the score.

With regard to the film's overall design, Roger Ebert stated: "It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted, and spellbinding... Movies like this are not merely difficult to make at all, but almost impossible to make well." He credited the "technical difficulties" with being "so daunting that it's a wonder when the filmmakers are also able to bring the drama and history into proportion" and "found [himself] convinced by both the story and the sad saga". He named it his ninth-best film of 1997. On the television program Siskel & Ebert, the film received "two thumbs up" and was praised for its accuracy in recreating the ship's sinking; Ebert described the film as "a glorious Hollywood epic" and "well worth the wait," and Gene Siskel found Leonardo DiCaprio "captivating".

James Berardinelli stated: "Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic, you experience it." It was named his second best film of 1997. Joseph McBride of Boxoffice Magazine concluded: "To describe Titanic as the greatest disaster movie ever made is to sell it short. James Cameron's recreation of the 1912 sinking of the 'unsinkable' liner is one of the most magnificent pieces of serious popular entertainment ever to emanate from Hollywood."

The romantic and emotionally charged aspects of the film were equally praised. Andrew L. Urban of Urban Cinefile said: "You will walk out of Titanic not talking about budget or running time, but of its enormous emotive power, big as the engines of the ship itself, determined as its giant propellers to gouge into your heart, and as lasting as the love story that propels it." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly described the film as "a lush and terrifying spectacle of romantic doom. Writer-director James Cameron has restaged the defining catastrophe of the early 20th century on a human scale of such purified yearning and dread that he touches the deepest levels of popular moviemaking." Janet Maslin of The New York Times commented that "Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the first spectacle in decades that honestly invites comparison to Gone With the Wind." Adrian Turner of Radio Times awarded it four stars out of five, stating "Cameron's script wouldn't have sustained Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh for 80 minutes, but, somehow, he and his magical cast revive that old-style studio gloss for three riveting hours. Titanic is a sumptuous assault on the emotions, with a final hour that fully captures the horror and the freezing, paralysing fear of the moment. And there are single shots, such as an awesome albatross-like swoop past the steaming ship, when you sense Cameron hugging himself with the fun of it all."

Titanic suffered backlash in addition to its success. Some reviewers felt that while the visuals were spectacular, the story and dialogue were weak. Richard Corliss of magazine wrote a mostly negative review, criticizing the lack of interesting emotional elements. Kenneth Turan's review in the Los Angeles Times was particularly scathing. Dismissing the emotive elements, he stated, "What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only is it not, it is not even close." He later argued that the only reason that the film won Oscars was because of its box office total. Barbara Shulgasser of The San Francisco Examiner gave Titanic one star out of four, citing a friend as saying, "The number of times in this unbelievably badly written script that the two [lead characters] refer to each other by name was an indication of just how dramatically the script lacked anything more interesting for the actors to say."

Retrospective

According to Dalin Rowell of , "With complaints about its lengthy runtime, observations that certain characters could have easily fit onto pieces of floating furniture, and jokes about its melodramatic nature, Titanic is no stranger to modern-day criticism." In 2002, filmmaker Robert Altman called it "the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life". Similarly, French New Wave director and former Cahiers du Cinéma editor Jacques Rivette referred to it as "garbage" in a 1998 interview with Frédéric Bonnaud and was particularly critical of Winslet's performance, who he said was "unwatchable, the most slovenly girl to appear on the screen in a long, long time." In 2003, the film topped a poll of "Best Film Endings", but it also topped a poll by as "the worst movie of all time".

In his 2012 study of the lives of the passengers on the Titanic, historian Richard Davenport-Hines said, "Cameron's film diabolized rich Americans and educated English, anathematizing their emotional restraint, good tailoring, punctilious manners and grammatical training, while it made romantic heroes of the poor Irish and the unlettered." The British film magazine reduced their rating of the film from the maximum five stars and an enthusiastic review, to four stars with a less positive review in a later edition, to accommodate its readers' tastes, who wanted to disassociate themselves from the hype surrounding the film, and the reported activities of its fans, such as those attending multiple screenings. In addition to this, positive and negative parodies and other such spoofs of the film abounded and were circulated on the internet, often inspiring passionate responses from fans of various opinions of the film. Benjamin Willcock of DVDActive.com did not understand the backlash or the passionate hatred for the film. "What really irks me...," he said, "are those who make nasty stabs at those who do love it." Willcock stated, "I obviously don't have anything against those who dislike Titanic, but those few who make you feel small and pathetic for doing so (and they do exist, trust me) are way beyond my understanding and sympathy."

In 1998, Cameron responded to the backlash, and Kenneth Turan's review in particular, by writing " Titanic is not a film that is sucking people in with flashy hype and spitting them out onto the street feeling let down and ripped off. They are returning again and again to repeat an experience that is taking a 3-hour and 14-minute chunk out of their lives, and dragging others with them, so they can share the emotion." Cameron emphasized that people from all ages (ranging from 8 to 80) and from all backgrounds were "celebrating their own essential humanity" by seeing it. He described the script as earnest and straightforward, and said it intentionally "incorporates universals of human experience and emotion that are timeless - and familiar because they reflect our basic emotional fabric" and that the film was able to succeed in this way by dealing with archetypes. He did not see it as pandering. "Turan mistakes archetype for cliché," he said. "I don't share his view that the best scripts are only the ones that explore the perimeter of human experience, or flashily pirouette their witty and cynical dialogue for our admiration."

In 2000, Almar Haflidason of the BBC wrote that "the critical knives were out long before James Cameron's Titanic was complete. Spiralling costs that led to it becoming the most expensive motion picture of the 20th Century, and a cast without any big stars seemed to doom the film before release. But box office and audience appreciation proved Cameron right and many critics wrong." He added that "the sinking of the great ship is no secret, yet for many exceeded expectations in sheer scale and tragedy" and that "when you consider that [the film] tops a bum-numbing three-hour running time, then you have a truly impressive feat of entertainment achieved by Cameron". Empire eventually reinstated its original five-star rating of the film, commenting: "It should be no surprise[,] then[,] that it became fashionable to bash James Cameron's Titanic at approximately the same time it became clear that this was the planet's favourite film. Ever."

The film's climax has sparked many debates over the years on whether both Jack and Rose should have been able to fit on the floating door and survive, becoming among the most talked about aspects of the film. Cameron has stated he often gets asked about the scene and has spoken about and tested it numerous times; one early test said they could not, while another in advance of the film's 25th anniversary, said it was possible but unlikely and depended on numerous variables.

In 2017, on the 20th anniversary of its release, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was listed among the 100 best films in an Empire poll and in a later poll of members of the film industry. In 2021, Dalin Rowell of /Film ranked it the third-best film of Cameron's career, stating that it is "easily one of his best films, simply because it defied the odds", and considering it "a legitimately remarkable achievement - one that, despite its large budget, has a humble, earnest center. Even with all of the jokes the Internet loves to throw its way, Titanic demonstrates that Cameron is truly capable of everything he can imagine."

At the Golden Globes, Titanic won Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Director, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song. Winslet and Stuart were also nominated. The film garnered fourteen Academy Award nominations, tying the record set in 1950 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve and won eleven: Best Picture (the second film about the Titanic to win that award, after 1933's ), Best Director, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Sound ( Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson, Gary Summers, Mark Ulano), Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Original Song. Winslet, Stuart and the make-up artists were nominated, but lost to Helen Hunt in As Good as It Gets, Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential and Men in Black. Titanic was the second film to receive eleven Academy Awards, after Ben-Hur (1959). The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King matched the record in 2004.

Titanic won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as four Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The soundtrack became the best-selling primarily orchestral soundtrack of all time, spending sixteen weeks at number-one in the United States, and was certified diamond for over eleven million copies sold in the United States alone. It was also the best-selling album of 1998 in the US. " My Heart Will Go On" won the Grammy Awards for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television.

Titanic also won various awards outside the United States, including the Awards of the Japanese Academy as the Best Foreign Film of the Year. It eventually won nearly ninety awards and had an additional forty-seven nominations from various award-giving bodies around the world. The book about the making of the film was at the top of The New York Times' bestseller list for several weeks, "the first time that such a tie-in book had achieved this status".

Titanic has appeared on the American Film Institute's award-winning 100 Years... series six times.

25

A list of the top 100 thrilling films in American cinema, compiled in 2001.

37

A list of the top 100 love stories in American cinema, compiled in 2002.

14

A list of the top 100 songs in American cinema, compiled in 2004. Titanic ranked 14th for Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On".

Movie quotes

100

A list of the top 100 film quotations in American cinema, compiled in 2005. Titanic ranked 100th for Jack Dawson's yell of " I'm the king of the world!"

83

A 2007 (10th anniversary) edition of 1997's list of the 100 best films of the past century. Titanic was not eligible when the original list was released.

AFI's 10 Top 10

6

The 2008 poll consisted of the top ten films in ten different genres. Titanic ranked as the sixth-best epic film.

Titanic was released worldwide in widescreen and pan and scan formats on VHS on September 1, 1998. More than $50 million was spent to market the home video release of the film. Both VHS formats were also made available in a deluxe boxed gift set with a mounted filmstrip and six lithograph prints from the movie. In the first 3 months, the film sold 25 million copies in North America with a total sales value of $500 million, becoming the best selling live-action video, beating Independence Day. In that time, it sold 58 million copies worldwide, outselling The Lion King for a total worldwide revenue of $995 million. By March 2005, the film has sold 8 million DVD and 59 million VHS units. In the United Kingdom, the film sold 1.1 million copies on its first day of release, making it the country's fastest-selling home video release. It would hold this record until it was surpassed by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in May 2002 when that film sold 1.2 million home video units during its first day. Within the first week of release, Titanic quickly beat The Full Monty, selling a total of 1.8 million home video copies.

NBC acquired the US television broadcast rights for $30 million, which was considered a bargain.

A DVD version was released on August 31, 1999, in a widescreen-only (non- anamorphic) single-disc edition with no special features other than a theatrical trailer. Cameron stated at the time that he intended to release a special edition with extra features later. This release became the best-selling DVD of 1999 and early 2000, becoming the first DVD ever to sell one million copies. At the time, less than 5% of all U.S. homes had a DVD player. "When we released the original Titanic DVD, the industry was much smaller, and bonus features were not the standard they are now," said Meagan Burrows, Paramount's president of domestic home entertainment, which made the film's DVD performance even more impressive.

Titanic was re-released to DVD on October 25, 2005, when a three-disc Special Collector's Edition was made available in the United States and Canada. This edition contained a newly restored transfer of the film, a 6.1 DTS-ES Discrete surround sound mix and various special features. In PAL regions, two-disc and four-disc variants were released, marketed as the Special Edition and Deluxe Collector's Edition respectively. They were released in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2005. A limited 5-disc set of the film, under the title Deluxe Limited Edition, was also only released in the United Kingdom with only 10,000 copies manufactured. The fifth disc contains Cameron's documentary Ghosts of the Abyss, which was distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Unlike the individual release of Ghosts of the Abyss, which contained two discs, only the first disc was included in the set. In 2007, for the film's tenth anniversary, a 10th Anniversary Edition was released on DVD, which consists of the first two discs from the three-disc 2005 set containing the movie and the special features on those discs.

The film was released by Paramount Home Entertainment on Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D on September 10, 2012. The 3D presentation of the film is split over two discs and is also THX-certified. Special features on another disc included many of those featured on the 2005 Special Collector's Edition DVD along with two new documentaries titled "Reflections on Titanic" and "Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron." The latter aired on National Geographic on April 9, 2012, and was executively produced by Cameron.

Re-releases

3D conversion

A 2012 3D re-release was created by re-mastering the original to 4K resolution and post-converting to stereoscopic 3D format. The Titanic 3D version took 60 weeks and $18 million to produce, including the 4K restoration. The 3D conversion was performed by Stereo D. Digital 2D and in 2D IMAX versions were also struck from the new 4K master created in the process. The only scene entirely redone for the re-release was Rose's view of the night sky at sea on the morning of April 15, 1912. The scene was replaced with an accurate view of the night-sky star pattern, including the Milky Way, adjusted for the location in the North Atlantic Ocean in April 1912. The change was prompted by the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who had criticized the unrealistic star pattern. He agreed to send Cameron a corrected view of the sky, which was the basis of the new scene.

An accurate view of the Milky Way was used to replace Rose's view of the moonless night sky at sea, as in this photo from Paranal Observatory. The view was adjusted to match the North Atlantic at 4:20 am on April 15, 1912.

The 3D version of Titanic premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in London on March 27, 2012, with James Cameron and Kate Winslet in attendance, and entered general release on April 4, 2012, six days before the centenary of Titanic embarking on her maiden voyage.

Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers rated the reissue stars out of 4, explaining he found it "pretty damn dazzling". He said, "The 3D intensifies Titanic. You are there. Caught up like never before in an intimate epic that earns its place in the movie time capsule." Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman gave the film an A grade. He wrote, "For once, the visuals in a 3-D movie don't look darkened or distracting. They look sensationally crisp and alive." Richard Corliss of , who was very critical in 1997, remained in the same mood: "I had pretty much the same reaction: fitfully awed, mostly water-logged." In regards to the 3D effects, he noted the "careful conversion to 3D lends volume and impact to certain moments... [but] in separating the foreground and background of each scene, the converters have carved the visual field into discrete, not organic, levels." Ann Hornaday for The Washington Post found herself asking "whether the film's twin values of humanism and spectacle are enhanced by Cameron's 3-D conversion, and the answer to that is: They aren't." She added that the "3-D conversion creates distance where there should be intimacy, not to mention odd moments in framing and composition."

The film grossed an estimated $4.7 million on the first day of its re-release in North America (including midnight preview showings) and went on to make $17.3 million over the weekend, finishing in third place behind The Hunger Games and American Reunion. Outside North America it earned $35.2 million, finishing second, and it improved on its performance the following weekend by topping the box office with $98.9 million. China has proven to be its most successful territory, where it earned $11.6 million on its opening day, going on to earn a record-breaking $67 million in its opening week and taking more money in the process than it did in the entirety of its original theatrical run.

The reissue earned $343.4 million worldwide, with $145 million coming from China and $57.8 million from Canada and the United States. With a worldwide box office of nearly $350 million, the 3D re-release of Titanic remains the highest grossing re-released film of all time, ahead of The Lion King, , and Avatar.

The 3D conversion of the film was also released in the 4DX format in selected international territories, which allows the audience to experience the film's environment using motion, wind, fog, lighting and scent-based special effects.

20th anniversary

For the 20th anniversary of the film, Titanic was re-released in cinemas in Dolby Vision (in both 2D and 3D) for one week beginning December 1, 2017.

25th anniversary

Titanic was re-released in theaters by Paramount domestically and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (through the 20th Century Studios label) internationally on February 10, 2023, in a remastered 3D 4K HDR render, with high frame rate, as part of the film's 25th anniversary. For this version, the international prints update 20th Century's logo with the studio's current name, as a result of Disney's 2019 acquisition of the studio.

Titanic Live was a live performance of James Horner's original score by a 130-piece orchestra, choir and Celtic musicians, accompanying a showing of the film.[non-primary source needed ] In April 2015, Titanic Live premiered at the Royal Albert Hall, London, where the 2012 3D re-release had premiered.

Merchandise

In 1998, an official tie-in CD-ROM game was released, titled James Cameron's Titanic Explorer. The educational game covered the history of the vessel's construction, maiden voyage and sinking, as well as the discovery and exploration of the wreck. The game included deleted footage from the film and extensive 360-degree video footage of the film's sets.

In 2020, a board game based on the film, titled Titanic: The Game, was released by Spin Master Games.

References

Further reading

Ballard, Robert (1987). The Discovery of the Titanic. Canada: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 978-0-446-67174-3.

Majoor, Mireille; James Cameron (2003). Titanic: Ghosts of the Abyss. New York: Scholastic. ISBN 978-1-895892-31-4.

Marsh, Ed W.; Kirkland, Douglas (1998). James Cameron's Titanic. London: Boxtree. ISBN 978-0-7522-2404-6. OCLC 43745407.

Parisi, Paula (1998). Titanic and the Making of James Cameron. London: Orion. ISBN 978-0-7528-1799-6. Archived from the original on September 20, 2023.

Sandler, Kevin S.; Studlar, Gaylyn, eds. (1999). Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-2669-0.

External links

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Titanic is a 1997 American romantic disaster film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. Incorporating both historical and fictionalized aspects, it is based on accounts of the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912.

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handsome, young, boyish, romantic