“I pre-ordered the double VHS set from Toys ‘R’ Us,” recalls Lily Gladstone, who stars opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

Lily Gladstone; Leonardo DiCaprio. PHOTO:

LISA O’CONNOR/AFP VIA GETTY; TAYLOR HILL/FILMMAGIC

Twenty-five years before Lily Gladstone shared the screen with Leonardo DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon, she was somewhat of a Titanic fanatic. “I loved that movie,” the star says in the new issue of PEOPLE.

“It was one of the first things I spent my allowance on,” continues Gladstone. “I pre-ordered the double VHS set from Toys ‘R’ Us when that was still around.”

For the 37-year-old Montana native, the frenzy around the Oscar-winning epic — which hit theaters in 1997 and was released on VHS the following summer — is still fresh in her mind.

“​​I remember the Blockbuster commercial, [with store employees] hearing the crowd of young women approaching,” she says. “[The workers] set the Titanic on the shelf, and then you hear all the young ladies, and they’re like, ‘Uh-oh, here they come.’ ”

Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic” (1997). 20THCENTFOX/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION

Gladstone, however, wasn’t exactly a part of Leo-mania. “I loved that movie for the film and for Kate Winslet. Leo was great in it because Jack Dawson was great,” Gladstone explains of his stowaway character.

“And it’s funny, whenever I had crushes in sixth grade — because the year that it came out for me — I would kind of project my crushes into Jack Dawson. It was never on Jack Dawson,” she adds.

Titanic wasn’t her introduction to DiCaprio. “I had been a fan of Leo long before that. My first film that I watched him in was, I can’t remember which one came first, but it was either What’s Eating Gilbert Grape or This Boy’s Life,” she continues. “I loved Romeo + Juliet.”

Her favorite, however, was The Man in the Iron Mask. In the 1998 loose adaptation of the classic Alexandre Dumas novel, DiCaprio played both King Louis XIV and his twin brother Phillippe, who lived in exile.

“I already knew at that point I wanted to be an actor,” she says, “and getting to see one actor play that kind of duality, it was really cool.”

Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio in “Killers of the Flower Moon” (2023).

MELINDA SUE GORDON/APPLE TV

More than two decades later, after auditioning for director Martin Scorsese’s historical drama Killers of the Flower Moon, she landed the role of Mollie, an Indigenous Osage woman whose family was killed for their oil-rich land in 1920s Oklahoma. DiCaprio costars as her duplicitous husband Ernest, who has a hand in their deaths.

Gladstone’s nuanced performance as his trusting wife has made her an awards season favorite and generated deafening Oscar buzz. (If she gets a nomination and wins, Gladstone, who has Blackfeet and Nez Perce ancestry, would be the first Native American to claim Best Actress honors.)

Just before they began filming Killers in 2021, Gladstone was in Oklahoma on location and re-familiarizing herself with DiCaprio’s and Scorsese’s films.

“I was watching The Departed, and it was the scene where Leo’s character is on the phone with Matt Damon’s character. They call each other. It’s like, ‘Whose number is this?’ And it is just this incredible, tense face off where they’re both kind of afraid to talk,” she recalls of the 2006 crime drama.

“I was just watching the scene, and then I get a text on my phone from some unmarked number saying, ‘Hey, this is Leo. Do you want to come over for dinner?’ I look at it and I’m just like, ‘Is this really him?’ ” continues Gladstone.

“So then I text production and be like, ‘Hey, did Leo ask for my number?’ [They respond], ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s him.’ ”

Gladstone headed to the house where DiCaprio was staying, and his private chef cooked them dinner. Afterward “we hung out by the fire outside, just [talking] about, I don’t know, our childhoods,” says Gladstone.

Though costarring with DiCaprio, whose movies she grew up watching, would blow the minds of many, Gladstone always had faith the success she’s now enjoying would one day be possible.

“My dad always put it in my head that this would be my path,” says Gladstone. “And when you’re younger, you kind of believe that.”

Killers of the Flower Moon is now available on demand.