Elderly woman reduced to selling her autograph 15 MAY 2009: "Titanic" stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and the film's director James Cameron have donated US$30,000 to help support the elderly woman who is the last survivor of the Titanic. Ninety-seven-year-old Millvina Dean, had apparently resorted to selling her autograph to pay her nursing home bills in Southampton, coincidently, the city from which "Titanic" began its maiden voyage in 1912.
Her father who had hoped to make a new life for his family in the US, was one of the 1,517 casualties after the supposedly unsinkable ship hit an iceberg in the Atlantic. Dean, then only 9 weeks old survived.
DiCaprio, Winslet and Cameron made their combinedUS$30,000 donation after Irish author and photographer Don Mullan publicly challenged them to match his donation. Mullan, who photographed Dean for an exhibition, made his appeal last month in the Irish Independent newspaper.
The 1997 drama "Titanic" made more than $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office, making it the highest-grossing film of all time in figures not adjusted for inflation. It went on to win 11 Oscars, including best picture.
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