Oh là là- one of Titanic’s most famous (and oft-quoted) scenes, it turns out, wasn’t Leonardo DiCaprio creating the magic.
In the scene where Rose (Kate Winslet) instructs her beloved Jack (DiCaprio) to “draw me like one of your French girls,” and he proceeds to sketch a beautiful nude portrait of her while she’s wearing nothing but the Heart of the Ocean necklace, those aren’t actually DiCaprio’s hands we’re seeing — they’re director James Cameron’s.
In an interview in 2017 with Stephen Colbert commemorating the 20th anniversary of the film — which is now celebrating its 25th and being re-released in theaters this weekend — Winslet explained, “No, Jim Cameron actually drew that. Maybe no one even knows that until this moment right now.”
“Jim Cameron drew that and he did actually sketch me,” she added, clarifying that she was in a bathing suit, and not naked, while he worked on the drawing.
Fans of the director’s work know that Cameron is a lover of drawing. In fact, in 2021, he released Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron, which showcases his personal archive of hand-drawn art, including sketches from his youth and concept art he created for his hits, such as the Terminator movies.
20th Century Fox/Everett Kate Winslet in ‘Titanic’
This fun little nugget of Titanic history resurfaces every so often on the Internet, usually when Winslet is asked about the scene (yet again). The Oscar-winning actress has talked about the moment — and how much it haunts her — a number of times over the years.
In 2014, for instance, she told Yahoo! Movies UK that she often gets asked to autograph printed pictures of it.
“I don’t sign that one,” Winslet said. “It feels very uncomfortable. Why would you do that? … They were asking me to sign it. People ask me to sign that one a lot, and actually there’s a photo of it as well that someone’s lifted from a still of the film. That photo gets passed around. It’s like, ‘No, I didn’t mean for it to be a photograph that I would end up seeing 16, 17 years later.'”
