It has been 20 years since the release of Titanic, but people still discuss whether Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Jack had to die. Actor Billy Zane has an answer.
Zane played Cal Hockley in the 1997 James Cameron directorial.
“Your hero had to die. I don’t know what else would have done it. It had to happen,” Zane told People magazine.
The scene has fuelled debates over the fact that Jack perished in the icy water while actress Kate Winslet’s character Rose DeWitt Bukater stayed safe on a floating wooden door at the end of the movie.
Earlier, Cameron had insisted that he made an “artistic choice” to kill off Jack.
“Obviously it was an artistic choice, the [door] was just big enough to hold her, and not big enough to hold him... I think it’s all kind of silly, really, that we are having this discussion 20 years later,” Cameron said.
“But it does show that the film was effective in making Jack so endearing to the audience that it hurts them to see him die. Had he lived, the ending of the film would have been meaningless,” he added.
