Claire Danes Turned Down a Role That Would Have Had Her Reunited With Leonardo DiCaprio

Fans could have had a double dose of Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio. During an appearance on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Danes explained that she was pretty close to signing on for a role opposite of DiCaprio in one of his most famous roles: Titanic's Jack Dawson. Danes was being considered for the role of Rose DeWitt-Bukater, but, she says, she just couldn't bear to film another epic romance after her time on Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, which also happened to star DiCaprio.

"I think I did. I'm not entirely clear on that. There was strong interest," she explained of just how far she'd managed to go in casting.

As fans know, the role of Rose ended up going to Kate Winslet, who would herself go on to star alongside DiCaprio in 2008's Revolutionary Road.

"I had just made this romantic epic with Leo in Mexico City, which is where they were going to shoot Titanic," Danes said. "And I just didn't have it in me."

Danes went on to say that DiCaprio wasn't 100% sold on the movie, either. She told Shepard that he "was wrestling with the decision whether to do it or not."

She was there at the moment he decided to take it on, too, saying that he was in a red convertible and just went for it. The rest is cinematic history.

"And I could see he wasn't sure," Danes said. "But he was like, 'Fuck it, I gotta do this.' And I looked down at him going like, 'I totally understand why you're doing that. And I'm not ready for that.' And I think I really wasn't ready for it."

When Shepard asked about DiCaprio's launch into the celebrity stratosphere post-Titanic, Danes said that she felt it was coming for him, but that she didn't want it for herself, adding that she has no regrets about not going for the role of Rose.

"I think I may have sensed that I was courting that [level of fame] or I was proximate to that. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want it," she said. "It was going to propel me to something I knew I didn't have the resources to cope with. I knew I had to do a lot of foundation building."