We met Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt-Bukater on the RMS Titanic 20 years ago this month and director James Cameron says Leonardo DiCaprio’s much-loved character was always meant to die.

Answering Vanity Fair on why Rose doesn’t make room for Jack “on that door”, Cameron said: “…the answer is very simple because it says on page 147 (of the script) that Jack dies. Very simple… Obviously it was an artistic choice, the thing 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’re having this discussion 20 years later.

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….

Cameron added he “was in the water with the piece of wood putting people on it for about two days getting it exactly buoyant enough so that it would support one person with full free-board” so that Kate Winslet’s character Rose wasn’t immersed at all in the freezing water and could survive the three hours it took until the rescue ship got there.