Back in the public eye, James Cameron shares some embarrassing Leonardo DiCaprio stories
Apparently, the actor didn’t want to screen test for Titanic, but no one defies James Cameron
James Cameron is an old hand at this Hollywood press cycle thing. He knows that if you want your movie to break even by being one of the highest-grossing movies ever, you’ve got to tell some funny, slightly humiliating stories about your former co-workers. And while someone somewhere might be interested in what it was like to work with Sam Worthington, it’s nothing compared to what Leonardo DiCaprio circa 1996 was up to. Heck, this guy was running around with a squad called “The Pussy Posse.”
Still, Leonardo DiCaprio was pretty famous by the time Titanic came around, having secured his first Oscar nomination for 1994’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape in a performance that, for his sake, he’ll never, ever attempt to replicate. Of course, being a 20-year-old Oscar nominee has its perks, like being in the Pussy Posse, but one of them isn’t defying James Cameron.
In a career retrospective interview with GQ [via Variety], the Way Of Water director shared his first meetings with Leo. “There was a meeting with Leo, and then there was a screen test with Leo,” Cameron said. “The meeting was funny because I am sitting in my conference room, waiting to meet an actor. And I look around, and all the women in the entire office are in the meeting. They all wanted to meet Leo. It was hysterical.”
Cameron set up a screen test because they had just secured Kate Winslet for the part of Rose, and, well, this was an expensive movie, so it might help to see how they do together. “He came back a couple of days later, and I had the camera set up to record the video,” Cameron said. “He didn’t know he was going to test. He thought it was another meeting to meet Kate. So I said, ‘Okay, we’ll just go in the next room, and we’ll run some lines, and I’ll video it.’ And he said, ‘You mean, I’m reading?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Oh, I don’t read.’ I shook his hand and said, ‘Thanks for coming by.’”
“Wait, wait, wait. If I don’t read, I don’t get the part? Just like that?” Cameron recalled DiCaprio saying.