Titanic stars pay tribute to veteran actress

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio led tributes today to Gloria Stuart, the 1930s Hollywood beauty who became the oldest Academy Award acting nominee as the spunky survivor in 'Titanic'.

Stuart, 100, who gave up acting for 30 years before her 'Titanic' triumph, died of respiratory failure early yesterday at her Los Angeles home.

Her daughter, Sylvia Thompson, said she had been diagnosed with lung cancer five years ago and had beaten breast cancer about 20 years ago.

“She did not believe in illness. She paid no attention to it, and it served her well,” Ms Thompson said. “She had a great life. I’m not sad. I’m happy for her.”

Stuart co-starred as Rose Calvert, the 101-year-old survivor who was played by Winslet as a young woman. Both earned Oscar nominations, Winslet as best actress and Stuart as supporting actress.

“I am so saddened to hear of the loss of this remarkable woman,” Winslet said. “I feel blessed to have met her, known her and to have acted alongside her.

“Anyone who spent time in her presence will know what an extraordinary shining light she truly was. She will be deeply missed.”

'Titanic' director James Cameron wanted an actress who was “still viable, not alcoholic, rheumatic or falling down,” Stuart once said. Then in her mid-80s, Stuart endured hours in the make-up chair so she could look 15 years older and she travelled to the Atlantic location, where the wreck of the real Titanic was photographed.

DiCaprio, who played Winslet’s lover, Jack Dawson, in 'Titanic', said Stuart “was a force both on and off screen”.

“An amazingly sweet person, a fantastic actress, and someone who always fought for what she believed in. She was one of the last great actresses from the Golden Era of Hollywood,” he said in a statement through his publicist.

In her youth, Stuart was a blonde beauty who starred in B-movies as well as some higher-profile ones such as 'The Invisible Man', Busby Berkeley’s 'Gold Diggers Of 1935' and two Shirley Temple films, 'Poor Little Rich Girl' and 'Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm'. But by the mid-1940s she had retired.

She resumed acting in the 1970s, doing occasional television and film work, including Peter O’Toole’s 1982 comedy 'My Favourite Year'. But her later career would have remained largely a footnote if Cameron had not chosen her for his 1997 epic about the doomed liner that struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage in 1912.

It was the first time in Oscar history that two performers were nominated for playing the same character in the same film and it made 87-year-old Stuart the oldest acting nominee in history.

“Anchors aweigh!” Stuart said when the nominations were announced in February 1998.

Stuart was thought by many to be the sentimental favourite for the supporting-actress prize, but the award went to Kim Basinger for 'LA Confidential'.

Shortly after her 100th birthday on July 4, Stuart was honoured with a tribute at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.