Titanic accomplishment: Young Rose, the heroine

Pre-cruise: Art-house hits such as Heavenly Creatures and Sense and Sensibility.

Post-cruise: Like DiCaprio, Winslet avoided big-star vehicles and went native, appearing in two exotic independent films -- Hideous Kinky, which came and went hideously quickly, and Holy Smoke, which is earning mixed reviews but acclaim for her steamy performance. (Winslet, 24, also married Kinky assistant director Jim Threapleton.)

'Kate could have done any movie she wanted to coming out of Titanic, but she didn't race off and take a paycheck,'' says Titanic producer Jon Landau. ''She picked movies she responded to. And you've got to admire that.''

What she took with her: She insists Titanic did not change her life in any way. ''After I did the boat film -- and now I'm only allowed to call it the boat film in my house -- so many people said to me, 'Oh my God, your life is going to really change,' '' she told InStyle magazine. ''But I made a decision that there weren't going to be any changes. I still go down to my local swimming pool and stand on the queue and pay like everybody else.''

Next: Quills, an erotic triangle from Douglas Wright's Obie-winning play, due in the fall; Winslet plays the maid of the Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush), who has been imprisoned in a Parisian insane asylum. And Therese Raquin, in which she plays a sensual woman who, along with her lover, murders her weak husband and is haunted by his ghost, based on the 1867 Emile Zola novel. It begins filming in London in late April.