Forget Cannes, Venice, Sundance and all the other film festivals that try to lay claim to the bragging rights for the most starry celebration on cinema.
Just days after the Oscar nominations came out, the 20th Annual Santa Barbara Film Festival proved truly Titanic, literally and figuratively, playing host to four of this year’s top acting nominees–Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Annette Bening and Virginia Madsen–as well as Kevin Bacon, Paul Giamatti, the world premiere of Woody Allen‘s latest film Melinda & Melinda, and a most enviable collection of nominees in other categories, celebrated filmmakers and a list on celeb attendees who either made the quick drive up from Los Angeles or, like Jeff Bridges and Michael Keaton, make their homes in the bucolic seaside community.
Or let us put it to you this way: where else will you find Kate and Leo reminiscing, at separate tributes, about their acting philosophies, their Oscar noms and all of their films, including a certain blockbuster in which they appeared together. Hollywood.com was on the scene to collect the memories from the stars themselves.
Already Legendary Leo
“To be only 30-years-old and receive this is absolutely surreal. I’m truly honored,” Leo told the huge crowd–including Jane Russell, a star of Howard Hughes‘ films–which turned out to see him revisit his career with film historian Leonard Maltin and receive the Santa Barbara festival’s prestigious Platinum Award from his director for The Aviator, Martin Scorsese. “I grew up in Los Angeles with huge hopes and dreams of becoming an actor. I had always felt you had to belong to some Masonic cult to be an actor, that somebody would show up on your doorstep one day and say ‘You! You are an actor! Come with me!'”
Just days after his nomination for playing Hughes–“It was like a great Greek tragedy, like a piece of Shakespeare that had never been told,” the poised and articulate actor explained, “and we focused on this time period where he the most successful, hadn’t given up yet, was still fighting. It was an amazing character dynamic”–he also recalled his not-so-poised experience at his very first Oscars, when he was nominated for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?:
“I’d been in the business for like three years and my mom and I were like ‘We’re going to the Oscars! What the hell?” Leo recalled. “I remember putting my suit on and it was way too big and my hair was greasy and I didn’t have a speech. And we sat down at the Oscars and my mom said ‘Do you think you might win?’ ‘No, no. ‘You don’t have a speech, do you?’ ‘No. Should I?’ And she said, ‘Well, maybe.’
“And then full panic mode set in. ‘Oh my God. What if I might win? Is that possible?’ And thankfully I didn’t because I would have been an absolute buffoon stumbling around up there. I already had a thing for years about being in front of audiences, and I was petrified at even the thought of having to go up on stage. Two to three billion people? Something like half the world’s population, and I’m going to look like an idiot in front of them?’ I was terrified.”
The actor revisited his career, “forcing” his parents to take him out on auditions at age 13 (“Acting was something I inherently knew I wanted to do ever since I could remember”), his youthful stints on the TV series Parenthood and Growing Pains, and his first big film role in This Boy’s Life opposite Robert De Niro:
“I had to do something to impress him. I had to have my moment. And there was this scene where he was asking me over and over, ‘Are you a leopard?’ And I got up out of my chair and I screamed at him ‘Noooooooo!’ My veins were popping out of my head. And I’ll never forget his face, and the director and the producer. They all started hysterically laughing. And I thought ‘Okay, I’ve lost this job. It’s over, it’s done.’ And then a week later, I suppose I must’ve done something because they gave me the role.”
He also revealed that he’s not the type to take the elements of his darker characters, such as those he played in The Basketball Diaries and The Aviator home with him. “I’ve always been pretty good about putting a character away when I go home. I hear a lot of actors talk about becoming who that character is–I guess I’m not equipped for it because if I don’t shut off and become me at the end of the day, I will probably have a nervous break down, be mentally exhausted. I have to leave the set and be me.”
But on the set he admits even he finds himself vanishing into character, however briefly, and the experience thrills him. “It does happen maybe once for five minutes during the course of making a movie, where you get that slight flash and say ‘Wow, for the last five minutes I didn’t think about anything else, other than being that character.’ There is a really surreal dynamic, like a high, and it’s what I really live for.”
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Kate’s Great
“I love acting and I always want to be doing it,” revealed Kate on her tribute evening a few nights after Leo’s, showing their kindred bond in their craft. “I just always knew that what I was going to do.”
Winslet was charmingly self-effacing as revealed the secrets of her career trajectory, which included an early Oscar nomination for Sense & Sensibility, followed by another for Titanic, a third for Iris and her recent nomination for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She was surprised to be told that she was the youngest person ever to rack up so many nominations. Although she frequently confessed to acting insecurities. Hamlet was a major nail-biter for her until she realized the distinguished Shakespearean actor Derek Jacobi was even more nervous than she was. She was definitely secure in her role as mother to her children, committing to work on films only a few weeks a year in order to spend time with her family.
Kate described getting her first big break at 17 with Heavenly Creatures. After auditioning for Peter Jackson, she had to wait two months before she heard back, audition again and another month–meanwhile got a job in a delicatessen to earn some money.
“Finally I got a phone call–literally I was at work, making someone a turkey sandwich,” she revealed. “The phone rings and someone says “Kate, phone for you,’ and I was like ‘If you’ll just excuse me for a moment, I have to take this call,’ because I had just a feeling it was important. I never really got phone calls at work. My agent said ‘Well done, clever girl,’ and I burst into tears, immediately had to leave work, and forgot the turkey sandwich–the poor man had to go hungry that day.”
The actress also described some of the unconventional role she took after the huge success of Titanic. For Hideous Kinky, “I needed to shock and annoy everybody,” she laughed. “I loved that challenge of doing something I never imagined I might do.” For Holy Smoke, “There’s just no way you can say no to Jane Campion. I saw The Piano three times in the same day,” she explained.
Kate, who winced or averted her eyes almost every time she appeared in one of her film clips, also admitted that while she’s certainly not shied away from nude scenes–she frequently pointed out the size of her breasts in various film clips, pointing out if they were inflated by motherhood at various points in her life–shedding her clothes onscreen doesn’t exactly come easy.
“It’s very hard doing those things, and it was very hard with Harvey [Keitel in Holy Smoke]. He’s the same age as my dad, and it didn’t really occur to me until the day, and I thought ‘I’m not really sure how cool I am with this scenario,” she confessed. “Those types of scenes, no matter how terrified one is or how nerve-wracking they are, become very, very technical and they take so long.”
Like DiCaprio, she still finds her craft mysterious and challenging. “You can never reach a point where you’re prepared. ‘I know I can do this, I know how to act, I’m good at this, that’s fine,'” she said, “I always feel like I’m completely useless. And I’ve got a long way to go until I get really good, and I’m never going to think that I’m good enough.”
Titanic Memories
Actors’ neuroses aside, Academy voters seem to think that both Kate and Leo are doing something right. “This is a great moment for me and Leo,” Kate told the Santa Barbara audience. “I feel ‘Great. We did it. We didn’t do the flops, we did Titanic, we didn’t start taking drugs or drinking heavy, we didn’t go traveling for three years and not call anyone. It all worked out fine!’ We’re still here, still chugging away, trying to do a good job. It’s a good feeling.”
The actress described discovering director James Cameron‘s script. She still has her original copy, which has her initial reaction written on the cover in pencil: “I f***ing love this.”
“I always loved it, I really did,” Kate said. “I loved my character. I loved the story. I loved the love story. I thought it was beautifully written. And Jim Cameron, for all the things that are said about him–he’s a perfectionist, and he’s an absolute genius. I have so much respect for him.”
“Jim literally had to be a general,” agreed Leo. “Not only did he have to be concerned about what we were doing on screen but the multitude of other people who were screaming into his ear and he was screaming at as well. He had to literally have a general’s attitude to conduct his thousands of troops to work cohesively, simultaneously to do one given thing. It takes a certain adjustment period and it’s extremely stressful as an actor. Extremely.”
So stressful that DiCaprio nearly passed on the film, but Winslet‘s passionate pursuit of the actor ultimately convinced him sign on. “I had loved him in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? obviously and The Basketball Diaries, which I have to admit is probably my favorite of the films he’s done,” said Kate. “I was in Cannes that year and had just been cast in the movie, and knew that they had wanted Leo to do it. And I thought ‘It’s him, and I have to find this guy.’
“I actually tracked him down in the hotel he was staying and I said ‘Look, I’m not going to do this without you! It’s going to be really great and we’re going to have loads of fun, and I’m nice to work with!'” she laughed. “As much as I could I kept calling him and persuading him until finally I think he felt so guilty about the idea of NOT doing it. And thank God he did.”
Leo recalled Winslet‘s Cannes courting as well: “Kate and I had both essentially come from the independent film world before the mega-film Titanic came along, and she said to me ‘I know it’s something you’ve never tried before, but we’ve got to do it together!'” he said. “And I was like ‘I don’t know. What is this? The ship sinks? I don’t know what it’s like to do a film like that, and I’m kind of petrified.’ I had a lot of conversations with James Cameron but it was Kate at the end of the day, and we sort of dove–no pun intended–into it together, two young independent actors, just to try something new and have a completely different experience.”
And as powerful as their romance appeared on screen, it was far more familial when the cameras weren’t rolling, and their bond has endured. “It was very much a brother-sister relationship, which I loved,” explained Kate. “We really kept each other going. To this day, Leo will understand certain things about me, or how I’m feeling that almost no one else will know or understand, apart from my husband.
“He’ll identify things that he’ll see in a performance of mine that he’ll know that I wouldn’t have liked in my own performance,” Kate continued, “and I do the same thing with him. It’s really funny. We’ll actually go ‘I saw you in whatever and’–her voice flies into a sing-song tone–“‘I know how horrible you feel about that certain moment.’ Because we worked so closely.”
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King and Queen of the World
Another thing the two performers shared was living at the center of the uncanny amount of hype and audience reaction that surrounded the film.
“I had no idea what was going to happen, what was going to happen to me,” said Kate. “I remember people saying to me ‘You know, your life’s going to change,’ and I think [defiant] ‘My life’s not going to change. My life’s not going to change at all! What are they talking about?’ And I’d get really kind of defensive. And you know what? My life did change. It completely changed.”
“The best way I could possibly describe it is that you’re walking around as someone else,” agreed Leo. “It’s an out-of-body experience. You’re interacting with people and they have a perception of you already, like they already know you, and it’s weird.”
Both actors continue to marvel at the cultural boundaries the film crossed. “I was literally in the rainforests of Brazil, where there are Indians walking around with no clothes on and paint on their face and feathered earrings,” recalled DiCaprio. “And I’d say ‘Wow, I’m going to really disappear here.’ I walk into a straw hut and they were all naked, and one guy looks over at me–the chief’s son–and he goes ‘Leonardo?’ ‘Uh, yeah.’ ‘DiCaprio?’ And by the way, they didn’t speak a word of English, and didn’t even speak Portuguese. And he goes Titanic.
“Pretty soon I realized that everyone in the village had seen Titanic.” Leo continued. “I went into another straw hut and there was a little television there, and a satellite dish, and they had somehow seen that movie. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend or understand how many people had seen it. It went even beyond the film in a lot of way. It affected so many people around the world that I’m still having a hard time comprehending the dynamic of that movie.”
His co-star had a shockingly similar experience, albeit on the other side of the planet: “I had gone to an ashram one day in the foothills of the Himalayas,” said Kate. “I took this walk, and this man came walking towards me on a dusty old path, blind in one eye. I was trying to get around him, get out of his way, and he stopped, with this huge walking stick, and just looked at me, took his walking stick and pointed at me and said: ‘You…Titanic.’ That was a moment, you know? Okay, that little film actually touched quite a few people.”
The actress marveled at the encounter. “Just to realize however negative I might have felt at the moment about that experience–feeling my life was invaded and this and that, it was in the newspaper so much and being so much more talked about and exposed–in that one moment I thought: ‘It’s about this film. It’s about the movie. And so many people had loved it, and so many people had seen it, in clearly all parts of the world, no matter what age they are or what race or color. It was just extraordinary.”
Of course, all of the attention wasn’t always easy to deal with. “I was feeling tired, and I didn’t want to get tired of my job,” said Kate. “I didn’t want to start feeling negative towards acting because I loved it so much.”
Leo decided to do what he could to escape the spotlight for a while. “It was about letting the ashes fall, going to museums around the world, collecting a little bit of art here and there, having other, different experiences and taking a little breather from this media whirlwind, which was. I don’t know how I dealt with it, ultimately. I did the best I could.”
Of course, it helped that both stars had a sense of humor about their experience. “I remember going to a supermarket right around the time of Titanic,” explained Leo, “and I was on the cover of People magazine–they’d taken a picture of me and said ‘The Sexiest Man Alive’ or something like that–and I remember being behind a woman. I had my hat down and my sunglasses on and was just getting some food, and she said ‘There he is again, Leonardo DiCaprio…Don’t you wish he’d just disappear?’ And I said this is the moment where I either go [mimes whipping off his hat] ‘WHAT? Do you know who I am?’ Or pull your hat further down, pay for your corn nuts and get out of there.”
For her part, Kate still chuckles at the silliest question she still gets asked about the film, which she delivered to the Santa Barbara Film Festival audience in a pitch-perfect Valley Girl voice: “‘Was that water really cold?'”
