How Kate Winslet got Leo interested in Revolutionary Road

Vanity Fair December 2008

Winslet and DiCaprio had become friends while shooting Titanic and have remained close. She thought he would be perfect for the role of Yates’s restless but cautious young husband. “I mentioned the script to Leo because we’d always have conversations about interesting things that either one of us had read, and we’ve just consistently done that over the years. When it became much more concrete with Sam’s involvement, the conversation really started with Leo, and then it all happened very quickly; he read it, loved it, said ‘Yes.’ And I’m not kidding you-within three months we were one set and doing it.” The re-uniting of Hollywood’s most iconic screen couple since Bogart and Bergman gives the film an obvious commercial hook, one that might be especially welcome for an adaptation of a bleak and not that well-known novel. “Leo and I were always aware that if we were going to do something together again that there would be a sense of expectation,” Winslet says. “It was going to have to be the right thing. We could see ourselves playing that married couple. The friendship that we have and the solidity of that was something we would be able to use. There’s an emotional shorthand that Leo and I have and physical ease because we’ve known each other so long...Leo and I, you know, are sort of kindred spirits...we’re cut from the same cloth. Both of us just got lucky (at a young age), started working and kind of learned on the job. We’re sort of self-education actors in a way, and we’ve just been lucky to work with unbelievable directors and actors who have taught us so much. I mean, it’s been spectacular.”
“We both knew if we were to work together again we couldn't treat on the kind of similar territory as Titanic,” says DiCaprio via email. “The characters (in Revolutionary Road where a departure from what we did together before, and we knew we could push each other as actors to get some interesting performances out of each other.” Asked how Winslet approaches a role, he observes, “Her working script is riddled with notes, with different colored bookmarks, every page has detailed reference points for her to infuse into her role. She takes on her characters like a detective might survey a crime scene.” He adds-no ifs, and's, or buts-”Kate is the most talented actress of her generation.”
For his part, Mendes had to navigate a kind of de facto triangle off-screen. “Leo and Kate’s instinctive, almost wordless understanding of each other saved us weeks of work," the director says. "I encouraged them and wanted them to go off in a corner together. I wanted them to be the unit of the movie-not me and Kate. For me it was a lot about Leo; I wanted him to feel that she and he were on each other's side and looking out for each other, rather than me and Kate. Because the person who was in the most complicated position in many ways was Leo, because he was there having to be married to, you know, the director's wife. And also I made a decision very early on, in rehearsals, that I just had to treat Kate as I would treat any other leading actress of her stature. And I had to do it 24 hours a day because otherwise it would be confusing. Because if I came back and started talking as her husband, rather than her director, then it would have been very, very confusing for her, and for me too."