‘Titanic’ theme song makes me want to throw up, Kate Winslet says
And the Oscar for the most refreshingly candid actress goes to ... “Titanic” star Kate Winslet!
Check out the above video of Winslet making the media rounds in advance of the re-release of “Titanic,” the mega-blockbuster that made her a household name and earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. Winslet had two options going into this interview. She could have done the whole Hollywood-smiley-face thing and gushed on and on about how the 1997 movie changed her life, about how much she loves it, about the on-screen magic she shared with co-star Leonardo DiCaprio ... blah, blah, blah.
Or Winslet could have told it like it is.
Winslet said that she feels “like throwing up” when she hears the soaring theme song of “Titanic.” In fact, she said, the signature Celine Dion ballad “haunts” her.
“I wish I could say, ‘Oh listen everybody! It’s the Celine Dion song!’ But I don’t. I just have to sit there, you know, kinda straight-faced, with a massive internal eye roll,” she said.
It’s no wonder she feels that way: “My Heart Will Go On” follows Winslet wherever she goes.
“Every time I go into either some kind of a bar in a hotel where there’s a live pianist or into a restaurant where they are changing their music according to who walks in the door ... it’s thrilling for people to ‘surprise’ me with the Celine Dion song,” she said.
Winslet is so entwined with the “Titanic” theme song that, during a recent appearance on an Italian talk show, the host urged her to go onstage and sing it with the live band.
“It rather haunts me,” she said of the song. “Bless you, Celine, but it does rather haunt me.”
Winslet said a similar thing happens “every time I get on any boat of any kind.” People start cracking jokes. She said she now makes it a practice to walk on board and tell everyone to let their jokes rip once and for all: “Lets get them out of the way ... and move on.”
And then there are all the people who want her to walk to the front of the ship and re-create her famous pose, arms flung wide.
All the half-joking and half-griping aside, Winslet said, “I am able to talk about [“Titanic”] with ... great joy.”
Winslet said she’s thrilled at the re-release of “Titanic” to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ship’s demise. The British passenger ship -- said to be unsinkable -- hit an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912, during its maiden voyage from England to New York City. More than 1,500 people died.
“Titanic” uses this tragedy as the backdrop for the epic romance between Rose and Jack, making them one of the most beloved movie couples in Hollywood history.
She’s grateful, she said, that “a whole new generation of people are going to be able to experience it on the big screen.” Among them: her children, who will be seeing “Titanic” for the first time.
“It’s great, it looks spectacular,” she said, adding that over time, the experience of watching “Titanic” has become “completely different.”
Directed by James Cameron, “Titanic” was nominated for 14 Oscars and won 11, including best picture, best director and best original song. (It seems as if everyone but DiCaprio was nominated for an Academy Award for the film.)
For years, “Titanic” reigned as the single most expensive movie in Hollywood history -- and its most successful. It made more than $1.9 billion worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Those records were surpassed in 2009 by Cameron’s sci-fi epic, “Avatar,” which raked in $2.78 billion.
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