arleta counterculture: Leo talks friendship with Kate, old times and marriage (very briefly)

LEONARDO DiCaprio has become a Hollywood star playing conmen, gangsters, romantic leads and billionaire recluse Howard Hughes.

But his most surprising role of all was giving away Kate Winslet last month at her third wedding.

It came as an even greater surprise to hear that Kate?s actor father Roger, who still lives in her home town of Reading, Berkshire, knew nothing of the marriage of his daughter to Ned RocknRoll.

But by agreeing to such a key part in a secret ceremony, DiCaprio revealed just how close he and Winslet have become since they formed what he describes as an ?unbreakable bond? during the making of the hit film Titanic in 1997.

It has been, he told me in our previous meetings before the wedding, a relationship of laughter and tears all the way. ?She?s one of my closest friends and feels we can say anything to each other,? he says.

?We were both just kids of 21 when we made Titanic all those years ago. But, even then, Kate seemed more mature and worldly than I was.

?I cried on her shoulder many times as we found the demands of filming under the director James Cameron so tough. We have never not been friends since that time. I speak to her all the time. But friends ? not lovers.?

Director Cameron, 58, has since admitted that he pushed his two young leads more than any other actors. Titanic had become a career-long obsession and he didn?t want anything to go wrong.

He even drew Winslet?s nude picture, which featured so markedly in the movie, supposedly sketched by DiCaprio?s character, who sat and watched his co-star sprawl naked on a sofa during the scene.

So what is it that keeps them together, nearly 16 years after the film?s release to become a box office success and, for Winslet, the first of six Oscar nominations?

?A sense of humour,? he says. ?We laugh at the same things. She never lets me take myself seriously, even if I wanted to. We have a special magic.?

DiCaprio, whose latest in a string of relationships with beautiful women ended just two months ago ? this time with 23-year-old model Erin Heatherton ? has often been rumoured to be about to marry like his Titanic co-star.

But he has kept to a bachelor?s life. ?Kate is a great believer in marriage,? he says. ?I admire her for the way she is able to conduct her personal life, which is so hard ? sometimes impossible ? in this business.

?A lot of your life is put on hold when you make movies. Everything, whether personal relationships or friendships, is put on ice when you go on location for five or six months, away from everybody.?

DiCaprio even worked with Winslet?s second husband, Sam Mendes, 47, when he directed them both as husband and wife characters on the 2008 film Revolutionary Road.

Even more bizarrely Mendes, who has since directed the latest Bond film Skyfall, had to watch the couple perform a love scene.

There was obviously a difference of opinion over the scene. ?It may seem strange to do a sex scene with a woman while her husband is directing but it did not seem strange to me,? recalls DiCaprio.

?When the scene was about to start, Kate said, in front of the film crew: ?Wait, wait, this is totally weird.? She turned to both Sam and me and said: ?Are you guys OK with this?? We both looked at each other and said: ?Yeah, we are totally fine.?

She said: ?It is even more weird that you are both OK with this.? But, for me, it was just acting in what was a family atmosphere.?

DiCaprio also points out that he knew Winslet before Mendes even met her. Or, indeed, any of her three husbands. ?We have the ultimate trust and the best of intentions for what we want to do,? he says.

Despite his huge on-screen success DiCaprio, is yet to win an Oscar, unlike Winslet who won best actress for her role as a former Nazi prison guard in The Reader, also released in 2008. She?s the youngest actress ever to accrue six Oscar nominations. leonardo-dicaprio-kate-winslet-children

If there is a shred of envy from DiCaprio he never shows it. ?Kate is like a detective in the way she researches her character. She is committed, professional and probably the most talented actress in the business right now.

?Our own relationship? I would describe it as goofy. We are a little bit older, a little bit wiser but ultimately the same people as we were when we were 21.?

Ironically DiCaprio was set to accept the role of porn star Dirk Diggler (which went to Mark Wahlberg) in the award- winning film Boogie Nights before Titanic.

?It appealed to me more,? he says. ?I like edgy, independent stuff. I had never met Kate but she phoned and said: ?I am going to say yes to this. Will you do so, too? ? So I committed to Titanic instead. Regrets? None.?

DiCaprio, who says of his own marriage prospects, ?I have no plans for anything ? if it happens it happens,? is a loyal and supportive friend for Winslet at a point when her English girl-next-door image has taken a battering.

She has daughter Mia, 12, from her first marriage to assistant director Jim Threapleton and son Joe, nine, with Mendes. She was with her boyfriend Louis Dowler when she met third husband Ned on his uncle Sir Richard Branson?s Necker Island in August 2011.

The wish to keep secret her third wedding from her supportive parents, whom she has regularly praised for their hard work in very modest circumstances, has also struck a discordant note.

But if Winslet?s background was comparatively poor, it appears rich to DiCaprio. His hippy parents, German mother Irmelin and Italian father George, split when he was a baby and he was raised in one of Los Angeles?s toughest districts.

?It was known as Syringe Alley because junkies dumped heroin needles there. But he says: ?I never got the urge to do drugs or rebel because nothing would have shocked my parents.?

The actor who began his career in spectacular fashion at just 18 with such movies as This Boy?s Life and What?s Eating Gilbert Grape, is back on screen with a starring role in Django Unchained, directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Will it give him another chance of an elusive Oscar? No. But he?s soon to be seen in The Great Gatsby, which could be his breakthrough for Hollywood?s biggest award.

?I have a long way to go before I catch up with Kate,? he says.

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