WHY WAS LEONARDO DICAPRIO PICKED OVER MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY IN 'TITANIC'?
The scene was set, McConaughey and Kate Winslet read their lines, McConaughey did, what he thought was a great job, and was confident he would get the role. He didn’t.
According to McConaughey, he went and “read with Kate Winslet [who starred as Rose] and it was not one of the auditions — they filmed it so it was like into screen test time… and after we left, you know, it was one of those ones where they, like, followed me and when we got outside they were like, ‘That went great.’ I really thought it was going to happen. It did not.”
Shortly after McConaughey’s audition, Leonardo DiCaprio took stage.
According to the director James Cameron, “Leo came in for an interview and I had this weird thing: I looked around the room and every woman in the building was in the meeting… the accountant was there, the female security guard, so I thought maybe I better cast this guy.”
Despite James Cameron’s slightly unorthodox approach to the selection, Titanic went on to become one of the highest-grossing films of all time. Despite coming out in 1998, it is still sitting pretty at number 4 on the all time “top lifetime grosses” list with around $2.25 billion.
So maybe picking DiCaprio over McConaughey wasn’t the worst decision James Cameron ever made…