However, Danes reveals she was concerned about the level of fame that would follow and whether she was ready for that attention as a young actor. Speaking on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, she explained her reservations over being considered for the role.
I wasn't,' the actress said of turning down the role that eventually went to Kate Winslet opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. Claire Danes is opening up about passing on starring as Rose DeWitt Bukater in the iconic 1997 film, Titanic, even though there was apparently "strong interest" in her playing the part.
What actress turned down the lead role in Titanic?
CLAIRE Danes has opened up about passing up on the role of a lifetime when she turned down the chance to play Rose in Titanic. The Homeland actress revealed why she doesn't regret her decision while guesting on the popular celebrity podcast, Armchair Expert.
“I had just made this romantic epic with Leo in Mexico City, which is where they were going to shoot Titanic,” Danes said. “And I just didn't have it in me.” While Danes knew she didn't want the part, she said DiCaprio “was wrestling with the decision whether to do it or not.”
Danes was just 17 at the time, while DiCaprio was 21. It's rumoured that the young actress found Leo a little immature and that he found Clare “uptight”. According to some sources, the pair barely spoke to one another when not filming scenes together.
Why Claire Danes Didn’t Want to Star in “Titanic” (2015)
Did Leo and Claire ever date?
It was rumoured that Claire Danes and DiCaprio dated for a year from 1995 when they co-starred as star-crossed lovers in Baz Lurhmann's Romeo + Juliet. Their relationship was never confirmed. DiCaprio and Kristen Zang were on and off for two years around 1996, and she was his date to the premiere of Romeo + Juliet.
Despite having maintained a close bond in the 25 years since meeting on the set of Titanic in 1997, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have never had a romantic relationship.
Reece Thompson, now aged 30, was just five years old when he played the 'Irish little boy' – a young third-class passenger who tragically gets killed alongside his mum and sister after the iceberg hits in the 1997 film.
Matthew McConaughey Could've Played Jack In Titanic
Before Leonardo DiCaprio was cast as Jack Dawson, many actors were considered, but Cameron felt that most were too old to play the role of a 20-year-old.
British actress Kate Winslet first garnered attention with the films Heavenly Creatures (1994) and Sense and Sensibility (1995). However, it was her performance in James Cameron's blockbuster Titanic (1997) that made her an international star.
The list of actors he considered for the role of Rose DeWitt Bukater before her is a long one – with the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Winona Ryder, and Claire Danes all having reportedly turned down the chance to star in the film.
We'll never let go of the love we have for the epic 1997 film Titanic, which told the tale of the ill-fated "unsinkable" ship through the fictionalized stories of people on board, most notably Kate Winslet's wealthy Rose and Leonardo DiCaprio's scrappy Jack.
Claire Danes almost starred as Leonardo DiCaprio's love interest again in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster film Titanic. The pair previously starred as star-crossed lovers in Baz Luhrmann's modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet the year before Titanic released.
Neither Jack nor Rose. The lucky guy is the stranger who lost his ticket to Jack in the gamble. If he had won the ticket, he might have drowned in that icy water.
25 years after the film Titanic was released, the boy who has a memorable one-line role in the iconic film is still receiving royalty cheques for his role. Reece Thompson who is now in his 30s says that cheques were regularly coming to him for his one-line role.
One of his early film roles, Titanic found Leonardo DiCaprio played the film's leading man, Jack Dawson. Dawson is a third-class passenger who wins a ticket to board the Titanic from a poker game. While on board, he falls in love with first-class passenger Rose DeWitt Bukater.
However, Titanic record has only increased with several re-releases. The most profitable of these were certainly the 2012 3D re-release, which raked in $350 million, and the recent 25th Anniversary release, which brought in $70 million. With the re-releases, the current worldwide total of Titanic is about $2.3 billion.
However, it is worth noting that some sources suggest Jack could have been as young as 17 or as old as 22. On the other hand, Rose DeWitt Bukater was portrayed as a young woman from a wealthy family. Her age is stated in the movie as 17 years old.
But despite the natural connection between the two, it never strayed into romantic territory. In fact, Winslet admitted she and her co-star would laugh when reading the speculation of gossip columns. "Just the notion of that was insane it would have been absolutely like incest," the actress said.
In an interview, Kate Winslet said that she and Leo never got together because she didn't want to ruin their friendship. They are such good friends if they did get together then that would ruin all they have with each-other.
In 2017, Kate admitted she never had a crush on Leo while filming Titanic. “I think it was seven months of very intense work,” she said “We were both really very young, and luckily — and this is the fortunate thing — we never fancied each other.
It turns out that Leonardo DiCaprio was 21 and Natalie Portman was 13 when Baz Luhrmann was making Romeo + Juliet. The Titanic actor was already a global crush, and the director did not wish to oust him from the film.
