If the producers of Titanic had gone with their initial favourite, Matthew McConaughey would have played the iconic role of the ill-fated artist Jack Dawson. During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live in January 2019, McConaughey revealed that he'd auditioned for the role of Jack and felt certain he'd landed the role. "The audition went really well," McConaughey told host Andy Cohen. "Well enough that you get outside and call your agent and go, 'I nailed it.'" However, he said rumours that he got the role and ultimately turned it down are false — DiCaprio beat him out fair and square.
Even after director James Cameron was blown away by DiCaprio's audition, DiCaprio was hesitant to play a traditional romantic lead role. "His character doesn't go through torment, and Leo previously and subsequently in his career was always looking for that dark cloud," Cameron told People in April 2012. "It became my job to convince him that it was a challenge to do what Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart did in previous generations, to stand there and be strong and hold the audience's eye without seeming to do very much. Only when I convinced him that was actually the harder thing to do that he got excited."