QUICK TAKES - May 12, 2009

“Titanic” stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and the 1997 film’s director, James Cameron, have responded to a challenge and donated $30,000 to support the last survivor of the Titanic in her last years, a representative for DiCaprio said Monday.

The survivor, 97-year-old Millvina Dean, has reportedly resorted to selling her autograph to pay her nursing home bills in Southampton, the English city from which “Titanic” began its fateful maiden voyage in 1912.

Dean was only 9 weeks old when her family traveled on the Titanic in hopes of beginning a new life in the U.S. Her father was one of more than 1,500 who died after the supposedly unsinkable ship hit an iceberg in the Atlantic.

DiCaprio, Winslet and Cameron made their combined $30,000 donation after Irish author and photographer Don Mullan publicly challenged them to match his donation, said Ken Sunshine, a spokesman for DiCaprio.

Mullan, who photographed Dean for an exhibition, made his appeal last month in the Irish Independent newspaper.