In a reunion even die-hard Titanic fans probably never expected they’d live to see, director James Cameron will reunite with his former leading lady Kate Winslet for his massively ambitious Avatar franchise. Winslet will be playing a character named “Ronal” and it’s unclear yet how many of the four planned sequels she will appear in or whether she’ll even be human or Na’vi. Well, at least we can all be sure Cameron knows how to shoot the Oscar winner in blue.
When breaking the news, Cameron told Deadline: “Kate and I have been looking for something to do together for 20 years, since our collaboration on Titanic, which was one of the most rewarding of my career.” But as any Winslet lover can tell you, their decades-long relationship hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing. In 1998, when Winslet was making the press rounds for her Oscar-nominated work in Titanic (her second nomination after 1995’s Sense and Sensibility) she famously told the L.A. Times: “I would only work for Jim Cameron again for a lot of money.” Winslet later told Rolling Stone that quote was misinterpreted, but even that magazine added that Winslet “related harrowing near-drownings, and lots and lots of yelling” courtesy of her director.
When asked in 2012 about Winslet’s occasional Titanic complaints to the press, James Cameron told Moviefone: “I have to cut her some slack on that . . . a good part of the success of the film was because of their great work and so now they’ve had this sort of sense that there was a long shadow they had to escape from, so I understand her needing to distance herself from it. But, on the other hand, you know, it’s been 16 years, like, come on, Kate. Get over it. Take the win, girl! [Laughs] It’s O.K. You can relax now. You can unclench . . . I said I understood [her] response, I didn’t necessarily agree with it.”
And that same year, when Winslet and Cameron walked the red carpet together at the premiere of Titanic’s 3-D re-release in theaters, Winslet was eager to defend Cameron against reports that he had bullied her on the set. “Yes, he lost his temper,” she admitted, “but he only ever lost his temper for really, really good reasons.” Winslet and Cameron have both said it was the actress’s relationship with co-star (and lifelong friend) Leonardo DiCaprio that got her through the very rough shoot. “Did Kate mention that they were really there for each other?” Cameron told Rolling Stone in ’98. “On a long shoot, especially as you get into, like, month five, you’re just in a siege.”
Though both Winslet and Cameron now consider their Titanic feuds water under the bridge (or under the door?), Winslet still clearly carries some scars from that period in her life. At the time, Cameron dubbed the actress “Kate Weighs-a-Lot” and just earlier this year, Winslet gave an impassioned speech on body image and bullying which concluded: “I learned to embrace my flaws, to make no apology for who I am. I dug deep and I decided that I simply wouldn’t listen when they said my body didn’t fit. This is who I am, the real me, Kate from Reading.”
Avatar won’t be Kate from Reading’s first foray into the world of franchise filmmaking. The actress previously starred in the first two installments of the Divergent franchise (before it fizzled). As for Cameron, he seems in a mood to gather all his most famous former leading ladies around him. With Aliens star Sigourney Weaver already part of the Avatar family and Linda Hamilton returning to the first Cameron-produced Terminator film since Judgment Day, Winslet makes it a tidy hat trick for the veteran writer-director-producer. And as he continues to pour cold water on the film community’s enthusiasm over newer Hollywood players like Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins of Wonder Woman fame, Cameron may need all the old female friends he can get.
