Titanic star Kate Winslet tells Variety on-screen kiss with Leonardo DiCaprio ‘a nightmare’ to shoot

Golden sunset, rippling breeze and arms outstretched on the bow of the doomed Titanic – it is one of the most memorable love scenes in film history.

But Kate Winslet has revealed her kiss with Leonardo DiCaprio in that very scene was “not all it’s cracked up to be”.

Rewatching the film’s romantic crescendo, the actress, 48, told Vanity Fair: “Oh this was a nightmare, shooting this.”

She said DiCaprio, 49, “couldn’t stop laughing’ and they had to re-shoot “four times” due to the difficulty of filming at sunset, when the light changes quickly.

What made it even harder, she added, was that the hair and make-up team could not be there, as the set was difficult to access.

So she had to do it herself. She said: “We kept doing this kiss, and I’ve got a lot of pale make-up on and I would have to do our make-up checks, on both of us ... and I would end up looking as though I’d been sucking a caramel chocolate bar after each take because his make-up would come off on me.”

But it was not all bad: Ms Winslet admitted her co-star was “quite the romancer”.

The 1997 film propelled her to international fame, but she told the latest issue of Variety magazine that it left her feeling “a bit beaten up”.

“I had a lovely family, but all my family saw is, ‘My God, Kate’s got work in a really big film’. One doesn’t want to turn around to your mum and dad and say, ‘It’s really hard, actually’.”