Kate Winslet Says Filming ‘Titanic’s “I’m Flying” Scene Was A “Nightmare,” Jokes That Kissing Leonardo DiCaprio “Was Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be”

It’s not always easy being King of the World — at least, according to Kate Winslet, who recently looked back on filming the 1997 hit romance film Titanic.

The actress rewatched the iconic “I’m Flying” scene from Titanic for Vanity Fair’s “Scene Selection” series, which has celebrities react to various scenes from throughout their careers.

Winslet kicked things off by watching her character Rose DeWitt Bukater make out with Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Jack Dawson on the bow of the Titanic — a scene that’s had hopeless romantics swooning for nearly three decades.

“My god, he’s quite the romancer, isn’t he? No wonder every young girl in the world wanted to be kissed by Leonardo DiCaprio,” she said. “It was not all it’s cracked up to be.”

According to Winslet, filming the scene was not nearly as romantic as it looked.

“This was a nightmare, shooting this,” she recalled. “Leo couldn’t stop laughing, and we had to reshoot this about four times because [director James Cameron] wanted a very specific light for this, obviously, and the sunsets kept changing where we were.”

Not only could she not breathe in her “bloody corset,” but they had to climb up a ladder to get to the set piece. And since hair and makeup couldn’t reach them, she had to hide their makeup brushes and sponges in her costume and touch up their faces between takes herself.

“We kept doing this kiss, and I’ve got a lot of pale makeup on, and I would have to do our makeup checks — on both of us, between takes — and I would end up looking as though I’d been sucking a caramel chocolate bar after each take because his makeup would come off on me,” she said. “And he just looked like there was a bit missing from his face because there was this big pale bit from all my makeup getting onto him.”

While Winslet described the experience as “such a mess,” she said she still feels “proud” of the film.

“I feel that it is that film that just keeps giving. Whole other generations of people are discovering the film or seeing it for the first time and there’s something extraordinary about that,” she said, noting, “It doesn’t mean that people don’t get me to try and reenact this every time I’m on a flipping boat, which does my head in.”

When asked if she ever actually reenacts the famous scene, Winslet admitted, “Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.”