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1. Who directed Titanic?
James Cameron
Cameron had made The Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss, and he dived to the real wreck a dozen times before shooting began. He won three Oscars for the film, for directing it, producing it and editing it.
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2. Who plays Jack Dawson?
Leonardo DiCaprio
DiCaprio was twenty-two and known for Romeo + Juliet. Matthew McConaughey was the studio's preferred choice, Cameron insisted on DiCaprio, and the film made him the most famous young actor in the world.
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3. Who plays Rose?
Kate Winslet
Winslet campaigned hard for the part, sending Cameron notes and a single rose. She was nominated for Best Actress, and Gloria Stuart, who plays Rose at a hundred and one, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at eighty-seven.
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4. How does Jack get his ticket?
He wins it in a poker game
A game of five-card draw in a dockside bar minutes before the ship sails, with his friend Fabrizio's ticket on the table too. 'We're the luckiest sons of bitches in the world,' he says, running for the gangway.
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5. What's the blue diamond necklace called?
The Heart of the Ocean
Cal gives it to Rose as an engagement present, and it's the reason a treasure hunter is poking around the wreck in the present day. It's fictional, though it owes a great deal to the real Hope Diamond.
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6. Where's Jack standing when he shouts "I'm the king of the world!"?
On the bow
Arms out at the very front of the ship, with Fabrizio beside him and dolphins below. Cameron repeated the line when he collected his Best Director Oscar, to a mixed reception.
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7. Who plays Rose's fiancé, Cal Hockley?
Billy Zane
Zane's Cal is rich, jealous and quick to hit people. Bill Paxton plays the treasure hunter in the modern scenes, David Warner is Cal's valet, and Victor Garber is the ship's designer.
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8. Which real passenger does Kathy Bates play?
Molly Brown
Margaret Brown, the new-money Denver millionaire who lends Jack a dinner jacket and later tries to turn her lifeboat back. The newspapers called her 'the unsinkable Molly Brown' after she survived.
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9. What does Jack ask Rose to do in her stateroom?
Pose for a drawing
'Draw me like one of your French girls,' wearing only the necklace. The hands sketching her in close-up are Cameron's own, and the finished drawing later sold at auction for sixteen thousand dollars.
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10. On what date did the ship sink?
April 15, 1912
She struck the iceberg late on the night of April 14 and went down in the early hours of the 15th, with more than fifteen hundred people lost. The film keeps to the real timeline almost to the minute.
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11. Who sings "My Heart Will Go On"?
Celine Dion
Cameron didn't want a pop song at all, and Dion had to be talked into recording the demo, which is the version that was released. It won the Oscar for Best Original Song and sat at number one around the world.
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12. How many Academy Awards did Titanic win?
Eleven
A record it shares with Ben-Hur and, later, The Return of the King, from fourteen nominations. It won Best Picture and Best Director but neither of its acting nominations.
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13. Where was the ship built for the film?
In a tank on the coast of Mexico
Fox built a studio from scratch at Rosarito Beach in Baja California, with a near-full-size replica of the ship's starboard side standing in a seventeen-million-gallon tank. The present-day scenes were shot on a real Russian research vessel over the wreck.
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14. What was Titanic the first film to do at the box office?
Pass a billion dollars worldwide
It stayed at number one in America for fifteen weeks and reached a billion in March 1998. With later re-releases it has passed two billion, and only two films have ever made more.
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15. What does Jack say when Cal needles him at dinner about his rootless life?
"To make each day count."
The whole table takes it up as a toast, Molly Brown first. The second line belongs to the ending, and the third to the old Rose telling the story.
