Kate Winslet auditioned for Titanic with Matthew McConaughey.

2 December 2017

Kate Winslet auditioned for 'Titanic' with Matthew McConaughey.

Kate Winslet

The 42-year-old actress became a global sensation 20 years ago when she nabbed the leading role of Rose DeWitt Bukate alongside Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack Dawson in the romantic disaster film but, although Paramount and the director James Cameron were in two minds about who to cast as the handsome orphan, she has admitted she actually went for the part alongside the 48-year-old actor.

Speaking on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert', the host said: "Paramount wanted Matthew McConaughey for the role of Jack but [James] Cameron insisted on Leo, how would that have changed things?"

To which Kate said: ""I auditioned with Matthew, isn't that weird?

"I've never said that in public before!"

Although Leonardo's character Jack spent the majority of his scenes in the freezing water, Kate has admitted she's the one who got sick with hypothermia because the vast filming location made it impossible for the crew to warm the water up.

She confessed: "I did get hypothermia. It was really f***ing cold!"

Despite getting ill from the final scenes, it didn't put Kate off doing any other water work as she has demanded to do all "her own" acting in the water in 'Avatar 2'.

Cameron - who is also directing Avatar 2' - said previously: "She does, and she's very excited about it. She blazed through for a couple of days of rehearsals and saw the world that we had created, and how we do the work, and she's very excited. She plays a character who's part of the Sea People, the reef people. The one thing she did do is demand that she do all her own water work. I said, 'Alright, that's fine, we'll have to teach you how to free dive.' The other actors are up to three- and four-minute breath holds. We've already been doing underwater capture. We did a scene last week with six teenagers, well, actually five teenagers and one seven-year-old underwater holding their breath for a couple minutes and acting, actually doing a dialogue scene under water because they speak kind of a sign language."