How do you make a movie that is about a story so famous that everyone already know how it ends? In the case of Titanic you hire huge stars, spend hundreds of millions of dollars, flood the media with advertising, and hope for the best. Titanic was a blockbuster smash hit movie made in 1997 that starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and Billy Zane. At the time it was made it was the most expensive movie ever made at an astonishing cost of $200,000,000 and many people were saying that the producers who backed the film were crazy because they would never make their money back. The huge price tag alone made people curious but curiosity alone was not going to help the producers make their $200,000,000 back on the movie. Hype and curiosity would only last a few days and then the movie would slowly sink into oblivion just like its namesake. Titanic did much better than survive on only hype and curiosity. Much better. By the time Titanic was done it had raked in almost $1 Billion in box receipts all over the world and garnered 14 Academy Award nominations. If that wasn’t enough it won 11 of those 14 Oscars in the categories of best art direction, best cinematography, best costume design, best director, best effects, best film editing, best music, best original song, best picture, and best sound. With all of those wins it is curious that none of the actors received Oscars for their performances. Two of the actresses were nominated one for best leading actress and the other for best supporting actress but none of the actors actually won any Oscars for Titanic. But there was one shining star.

When Kate Winslet made Titanic she was only 22 years old but she was already an accomplished actress. With performances in such movies as Hamlet and Sense And Sensibility Kate Winslet was already a star by the time she got to the Titanic set and even though she was only 22 years old when Titanic was released she was already an Oscar nominated actress for her work in Sense And Sensibility. It is said that Sense And Sensibility opened the door for Kate Winslet and that Titanic kicked the door off its hinges for her. She would continue to find success in her future movies, and she would be nominated for more Academy Awards, but to this point she has yet to earn the right to call herself an Oscar winning actress. The general consensus in Hollywood is that someday she will earn that right.

The making of Titanic is an incredible story. Aside from the historic price tag there was also the unprecedented quest for realism in the movie. Director James Cameron insisted on using shots from inside the real wreckage of the Titanic for his movie and not just views from inside a submarine. So his brother developed a camera that could withstand the depth and the conditions that the Titanic was under so that they could get footage of the actual ship to use in the movie. The dives took hours but the end result was only 12 minutes of film per dive which meant that each dive had to be carefully planned so as to maximize the filming time. In the end over a dozen dives were made and Cameron found the whole experience to be so intense that he wound up spending more time with the Titanic than the people that sailed on her last voyage did.