Claire Danes tells years later why she rejected the lead role in James Cameron's blockbuster that Kate Winslet ended up taking.
If there is a film that continues to be an inexhaustible source of stories, Titanic is one of the greatest. It was released in 1997 and it is only now that Claire Danes confesses that she was offered the role of Kate Winslet alongside Leonardo DiCaprio (and that she turned it down).
The Homeland actress told it this week on actor Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast: "I think [I turned him down]. I'm not completely sure about that. There was a lot of interest. But, honestly, I had just shot an epic romance movie with "I read in Mexico City, which is where they were going to film Titanic, and I just didn't have it in me."
Of course, Danes had just filmed Romeo + Juliet, the blockbuster Baz Luhrmann adaptation with which she and DiCaprio conquered the hearts of thousands of teenagers around the globe.
"I remember that Leo and I shared a manager at that time and we were in his office," Danes recalls in the podcast. "And I was on a balcony, which is funny [given the context of Romeo + Juliet] and he was walking around in circles in the parking lot. I knew he was debating whether to do [Titanic] or not and he looked at me and he told me: 'I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it.'"
Danes assures in his interview that that day he could see in DiCaprio's face that the actor was not sure he wanted to embark on a production of such magnitude: "But he said: 'Screw it, I have to do it.' And I looked at him and said "That I totally understood why he did it, but I wasn't ready for it. And I truly believe I wasn't ready."
"I just wanted to have different creative experiences and [Titanic] seemed like a repeat," explains Danes about the fame she would have faced if the film ended up becoming the box office milestone it ended up being. "And, like I said, I think it was going to propel me into something that I didn't have the resources to deal with. I knew I had to build a lot of foundation first."
What Claire Danes also confirms is that she has zero regrets about turning down the role. It's something he confirmed in 1998 when he went to the premiere of The Man in the Iron Mask starring DiCaprio: "When he entered the room, the floor tipped in his direction. Everyone in there went towards him. It was a shock." kind of scary. And I think I may have felt like I was getting close to something like that and I just couldn't do it."
