LEONARDO DICAPRIO TITANIC INTERVIEW
Good Morning America's Joel Siegel chats with the young star about his performance as Jack Dawson in Titanic.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO stars in James Cameron's Titanic as Jack Dawson, a cocky bohemian who wins his ticket onto the big boat in a card game. Dawson's ill-fated romance with a wealthy passenger (Kate Winslet) does more than pass the time between special effects: it gives DiCaprio his most likable character yet.
JS:
Great performance. The second I saw you I liked that guy. I really liked that character.
Leo:
It was interesting because I've traditionally played characters that have been tortured in some aspect, whether it be by love, or drugs, or whatever, but this guy was like an open book. He was an open-hearted guy with no demons, and it was more of a challenge than I ever thought it would be.
JS:
How much of you is in that character. Are you like that character?
Leo:
I would like to be like that character. I mean, Jack sort of embodies a lot of things that I think we all find admirable. Like a bohemian that lives life day to day, finds his own sort of happiness. You try to be like that. I wish . . . I think I do have some of those aspects, but he's almost like the kind of guy we all wish to be.
JS:
When they [Jack and Rose] see each other, all [the audience wants] is for these two people to be together.
Leo:
It's interesting. I mean, that's what initially attracted me, more so than even the dynamic of what the Titanic meant to the world. And what the sort of story the Titanic was, was this love story. And when the ship goes down it's like their whole world coming to a halt.
JS:
How difficult were the action sequences,the water sequences? It's got to be cold.
Leo:
It was cold. There was a gigantic sort of tank that the interior of the Titanic was in, and it was on hydraulics. So it basically has a level of sea water to it and whenever he wanted corridors to be flooded with sea water he'd tip the hydraulics on it. And the water would come rushing in. It was always like a new sort of roller-coaster ride to jump into. Granted, after the fiftieth or sixtieth time doing it, it becomes tedious. But the initial excitement of doing it for the first time was cool.
JS:
Lots of wrinkles on your fingers.
Leo:
Oh, for sure. I remember a scene toward the ending where the ship goes straight up and it's completely bobbing up and down in the water and we're at the top of it. And looking up and seeing like fifteen gigantic cranes moving around and we're on this hydraulic poop deck and below us we see like thirty stuntmen on bungee cords. Kate and I looked at each other and said "How did we get here?"
JS:
When you see it on the screen, you see a lot of things on the screen that were not happening really because a lot of stuff was computer-generated. Are you awestruck by the effects?
Leo:
Oh, when I first saw it, there's a whole sort of world that goes on while you're doing your stuff and I didn't want to focus on what was going on. Otherwise I would have been overwhelmed. I needed to do just what I needed to do. And make this character as real as possible. And concentrate on our little story that was going on. And then we actually see the ship cracking in half right in front of you. And it looks more real than anything. It looks like you're there. One of the most powerful shots for me in the whole movie was a panning shot with Kate Winslet's character, Rose, in the water sort of paddling and it pulls back to reveal like a marathon of over a thousand people just screaming and trying to survive hypothermia. It touched me.
JS:
Working with Kate Winslet. There's real chemistry there, chemistry on the screen.
Leo:
I hope so. I mean, we have it in real life. I think she's such a terrific girl. It's unbelievable. We were such good friends throughout this whole movie. We were almost joined at the hip. Everything that we wanted to complain about, we did it with each other, rather than doing it on set, and we got it all out in the open in our trailers. She's such a solid actress, and she possesses so much strength on-screen, it's unbelievable. And I think she's gonna be one of our best.
JS:
When this opened in Tokyo at the Tokyo film festival, you were in Tokyo.
Leo:
Yeah.
JS:
And I read that you had special entrances and exits and the Japanese girls were all over you. How do you relate to things like that?
Leo:
I sort of have always realized that there's always sort of a new pretty face and you--you definitely want to be remembered for your work rather than being sort of the hunk-of-the-month type of deal. That's what I've always aimed for. I don't know how long whatever is gonna last. It's like something that I don't expect is gonna stay around forever. What you want is your work to speak for itself. And as far as these fans are concerned, I like it. It's great to get that kind of attention, but it's also strange at the same time because you don't know many of these people individually. You know what I mean? You have your people in your life which is people that influence you. But it almost becomes surreal and unrealistic because most of the people you don't really know. So it's hard to feel a lot from it, you know.
JS:
Have you had to give up things that you like to do?
Leo:
Not quite yet. I mean definitely it's bordering on that. But I think no matter what I'm gonna continue to try and do the things that I did before even if it's a little more difficult. I just have to do it. I can't be confined to my house.
JS:
What are you gonna do next? How do you top the Titanic?
Leo:
I don't expect to. I mean, I did a film over the summer called The Man in the Iron Mask with John Malkovich and Jeremy Irons and Gerard Depardieu and Gabriel Byrne and that was unbelievable, working with those guys. I mean it's so cool with working people in that caliber because they're so relaxed about everything. They're almost like children in a sense; it's fun for them at this point. And it was totally cool working on that. But for now, after that movie, I'm taking a long time off.
