7 Things You Didn’t Know About Titanic

In the scene in which Rose goes looking through the corridors of the sinking ship for Jack, the water used in the scene was from the Pacific Ocean. The water was so frigid that when Rose gasps upon diving into the water, it was the actress’s genuine reaction to the ocean water. Kate Winslet was one of the few actors who didn’t want to wear a wetsuit while filming these scenes, and after this, she came down with pneumonia.

On August 9, 1996, around 80 crew members became ill after eating a batch of lobster chowder while filming in Nova Scotia. Police originally thought it was food poisoning, but when those who became sick started to complain of hallucinations, they took a closer look. Tests on the food came back positive for the drug phencyclidine, also known as PCP. The prankster was never caught, and none of the film’s stars ate the drug-laced chowder.

Could you imagine a Titanic where Jack wasn’t played by Leonardo DiCaprio? We didn’t think so, but producers of the 1997 film did. James Cameron pushed for Leonardo DiCaprio to take the pivotal role, but the film’s producers wanted another leading man—Matthew McConaughey.

Before Enya’s crooning was tainted by the torture scene in "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," Cameron wanted the Irish singer to compose the score for Titanic. He even went so far as to edit her existing music to fit a rough draft of the film. When she turned it down, Cameron turned to James Horner to produce the iconic soundtrack.

Kate and Leo had never met each other before the set of Titanic. To break the ice, Winslet did something drastic in an attempt to ease the tension for her inevitable nude scene—she flashed him.

Gloria Stuart, the actress who played the elderly Rose Dawson, was the only person who worked on the production of the film who was actually living in 1912, the year when the "Titanic" sank. She even received an Oscar nomination for her role, which, at age 87, made her the oldest actor to receive a nomination. In September 2010, Stuart passed away at the exceptional age of 100.

Jack’s character is an artist who totes a sketchbook filled with inspired drawings and passionately sketched nudes. But Leo wasn’t the mastermind behind the iconic figures; it was Cameron himself who drew everything in the book—including the infamous portrait of Rose wearing nothing but a bejeweled necklace.