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Kate Winsletat the Premiere of "Lee" at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square © Getty

Kate Winslet recalls 'amazing' Titanic reunion nearly 30 years later

Kate, 49, found global fame in the 1997 film

Rebecca Lewis
Rebecca Lewis - Los Angeles
Los Angeles correspondentLos Angeles
Updated: November 10, 2024
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Kate Winslet has recalled how she reunited with an iconic character from her 1997 film Titanic, almost 30 years later.

The actress appeared on The Graham Norton Show in the UK and shared that during a recording session for her new film Lee she recognized one of the violinist's in the 120-piece orchestra.

"When we were there, I was looking through the glass into the stage where all the musicians are — [a] huge, 120-piece orchestra — and I’m looking at this violinist and I thought, I know that face,'" the actress shared. Watch the video below:

Kate Winslet recalls 'amazing' Titanic reunion nearly 30 years later

Unable to place where she knew him from, Kate wondered if perhaps they were related. But at the end of the day she decided to talk to him, and discovered it was Jonathan Evans-Jones, who played Wallace Hartley, the violinist player who decides to keep on playing as the Titanic sinks.

"I went in and he went, 'Kate, it’s me.' And you know when the Titanic is going down and the violinist stands up and he goes, 'Come on, lads,' and he starts playing? It was that guy! I was like, 'It’s you!' It was amazing!"

Jonathan Evans-Jones, who played Wallace Hartley, the violin player who decides to play as the Titanic sinks.
Jonathan Evans-Jones, who played Wallace Hartley, the violin player who decides to play as the Titanic sinks.

The Academy Award winner found global fame as Rose DeWitt in the 1997 film alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. She has gone on to star in a wide mix of genres, including Christmas film The Holiday, indie cult classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and as a Nazi guard in The Reader, for which she won an Oscar.

She has remained close with Leonardo, and the pair appeared on screen together in 2008's Revolutionary Road; she was also called upon to hand him his first Oscar for The Revenant at the 2016 ceremony.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio dancing in a scene from the film 'Titanic', 1997. (Photo by 20th Century-Fox/Getty Images)© Getty Images
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio dancing in a scene from the film Titanic

Kate married Edward Abel Smith in December 2012 and welcomed the couple's son, Bear, in 2013. She is also mom to daughter Mia — an actress —  from her marriage to Jim Threapleton, and son Joe, who arrived during her marriage to Sam Mendes.

The Avatar: The Way of Water actress met Edward, her husband of over ten years, during a holiday on Richard Branson's Necker Island. 

Kate Winslet and Edward Abel Smith walking outside© Getty
Kate and Edward Abel Smith at the afterparty for Lee in New York

At the time he was legally known as Ned Rocknroll, but Kate shared that he later decided to return to his birth name because he did not "anticipate what might happen if he should have a girlfriend whose name was Kate Winslet and who was quite well-known".

She continued: "I got to the point where I [was] like, you know, I [was] filling in doctors' forms and it [said] 'mother's name' and 'father's name,' and I [was] like, 'Honey ... are we going to keep going?' And he [was] like, 'Yeah, you're right. I'll just change it back.' So, he changed it back."

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