A 'Revolutionary Road' for 'Titanic' Friends DiCaprio, Winslet

Dec. 24, 2008 — -- He sweetly pours cream into her coffee without being asked.

She casually touches his knee in mid-conversation.

He's exceedingly polite, likes to fortify himself with caffeine and wears Nikes.

She'll drop the occasional F-word, rolls her own smokes and prefers spike-heeled boots.

Oh, those rosy-cheeked "Titanic" kids, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Shipmates for life. How ironic that, as children, they began acting in commercials for products that naturally go together — he for milk, she for cereal. Now they are all grown up and ready to confront perilous waters of the marital kind in "Revolutionary Road," opening Friday.

It seems destined that they would reunite on the big screen. Survivors of history-altering events do tend to remain emotionally tethered. Especially if an over-budget cinematic disaster in the making manages to instead shatter box-office records (still king of the world at $1.8 billion), tie for the most Academy Award wins with 11 and catapult its stars to privacy-depleting fame.

The pair have squeezed in a lot of living into the decade or so since their careers exploded. Winslet, 33, has had two children (Mia, 8, and Joe, who turned 5 Monday), one divorce and a model marriage of five years to director and fellow Brit Sam Mendes. DiCaprio, 34, continues to enjoy his bachelorhood with regular upgrades in supermodel girlfriends and has grown into an avid eco-activist.

They have remained best-friend close, both following paths away from "Titanic"-sized blockbusters and toward challenging if not necessarily commercial fare with esteemed directors.

DiCaprio was once considered for pal Tobey Maguire's "Spider-Man" role but has ended up hitching his professional wagon to a guy named Martin Scorsese ("Gangs of New York," "The Aviator," "The Departed") while raising his Oscar-nomination ante to three.

Winslet turned down both "Anna and the King" (a flop for Jodie Foster) and "Shakespeare in Love" (a winner for Gwyneth Paltrow) to do "Hideous Kinky" and hasn't flinched from veering off the beaten path since, racking up five Oscar nominations in the bargain.

"To be honest, I think that's kind of who we always were," DiCaprio says about their uncompromising natures. "If anything, doing Titanic was very much a departure for both of us. It was an attempt to do something different from the string of very independent films that we had done up until that point."

Winslet says they regularly solicit each other's opinions on work choices. "In fact, I don't really talk to anybody apart from Leo about what I am thinking of doing. Including Sam sometimes, actually."

In the meantime, both had been seeking the right vehicle for a second collaboration. Main requirement: something that did not involve an iceberg and a seagoing vessel.