Only a year out of film school while peddling away as a marketing assistant at 20th Century Fox International, I had the opportunity to sit in the beautiful Paramount Theater on the Paramount Pictures lot and be one of the first audiences to feast my eyes on Jim Cameron's "Titanic." At the time, no one dreamed that the two studios would team up to drive the picture to a record gross of $1.8 billion worldwide, that it would win 11 Academy Awards, or that the picture's young leads, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, were destined for superstardom. Now, almost 11 years to the day later, DiCaprio and Winslet have reunited for their first collaboration since "the little cruise ship movie": an adaptation of Richard Yates' acclaimed novel "Revolutionary Road." Directed by Winslet's husband, Sam Mendes, the picture had its first public showing in the same theater, with Oscar in its sights and the Hitlist once again in attendance.

Speaking to an audience of Screen Actors Guild members and assembled press afterward, Winslet talked about what drew her to the period drama about a marriage straining under the expectations of suburban life in the 1950s.

"I read the novel and I read the script, and I felt almost embarrassed. I felt like I was a fly on the wall watching this relationship unravel between these two people and these savagely intimate conversations," Winslet says. "And I felt like I shouldn't be there and this immediately struck me as, 'Wow, this is a real relationship here.'"

Longtime friends, Winslet and DiCaprio had been looking to work together again for years, but wavered over finding an appropriate picture to follow up a cultural landmark such as "Titanic." But Winslet sent DiCaprio the screenplay, and he admits that he immediately fell in love with it, even though he found his philandering character, Frank, "detestable." DiCaprio explains, saying, "There is this element to him that's entirely sympathetic, because here he is in this environment trying to make his relationship work. He's doing the only thing a man should be doing: trying to protect his home nest, his family, and do the right thing."

One of the most striking moments in the film is a breakfast scene in which the consequences of what has taken place over the previous few months are painfully apparent to both characters, but unspoken. Winslet says she rarely notices how well a set is lit, but there was something "extraordinary" about what Roger Deakins ("No Country for Old Men") accomplished the day that scene was shot.

"It's not because he made it look beautiful or glorious morning light or anything like that," Winslet says. "He had really created the light to serve and support the emotion of the scene. It was stark and it was empty, but it was sad and also beautiful because of all those pieces. I was just very struck by that. And shooting that scene, I have to tell a little anecdote ..."

"Everyone loves anecdotes," DiCaprio interrupts cheekily.

"I know they do," Winslet says, flashing a smile at him. "It was so hard. It was such a difficult scene to do, and in the middle of shooting it, honestly, Leo and I became completely hysterical. We were laughing at something, I can't quite remember exactly what it was, but it was just so hard that we just had to laugh or we were going to cry."

And, coincidentally, that encapsulates the range of emotions that weave through this intriguing "Road."

"Revolutionary Road" opens in limited release on Dec. 26.