“Titanic” star Kate Winslet reflected on the moment director James Cameron said he’d make her “big and blue” ahead of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” their first movie together in 25 years.
Winslet, who starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the 1997 disaster movie and nearly drowned twice on the “Titanic” set, will play the Na’vi warrior Ronal as part of Cameron’s latest film, a 3-hour-plus thriller that’s set to have multiple sequels in the years ahead.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Winslet revealed how she and Cameron had changed their perspectives since she turned 21 on the set of “Titanic,” the highest-grossing movie of all time prior to the release of “Avatar” over a decade ago.
“I turned 21 on that shoot. I am now 47 years old. It’s a very, very, very long time ago,” Winslet told EW. “Jim, as a director, as a person, you know, we are just both different, older, have hopefully learned a lot more in terms of how to tell stories and be creative contributors and collaborators.”
Winslet said Cameron had a tendency of checking up on her over the years despite their lack of projects together.
“I feel like he’s always checked in with me. ‘Are you busy right now?’ or ‘What’s going on? I may have something,’” Winslet told the magazine. “Then I wouldn’t hear for a while and I think he’s drifted off that idea. Then he’d be floating back in with another one. And then in 2014, he did say to me, ‘I’m gonna get you big and blue.’”
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On Wednesday, Winslet told Yahoo UK that Cameron is a genius who’s committed to the vision he sets out for his films.
“What’s lovely is that, when he isn’t right, now he will say: ‘Yeah, that was kind of a mistake. That was never really gonna work, but I just wanted to try it to see and yes I was wrong,’” Winslet said. “So it’s really kind of reassuring to know that he is able to say, ‘I could’ve had a better idea for that thing.’ Any of us are like that so I really appreciated that about Jim.”