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Titanic became a worldwide success, eventually earning over $2.1 billion at the box office to become the highest grossing movie of its time, and Leonardonic

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A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.

All Releases

Domestic (30.1%)
$659,363,944

International (69.9%)
$1,528,100,000

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A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic. Domestic (30.1%) $659,363,944 International (69.9%) $1,528,100,000

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When Leonardo DiCaprio Disliked His ‘Titanic’ Jack Dawson Image & Almost Wanted To Give Up Acting: “I Hated The Way I Was Turned Into A Pretty Boy (2023)

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When Leonardo DiCaprio Disliked His ‘Titanic’ Jack Dawson Image & Almost Wanted To Give Up Acting: “I Hated The Way I Was Turned Into A Pretty Boy (2023)

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Leonardo DiCaprio's star image as a beautiful man has given him genre and media constraints.

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Leonardo DiCaprio is a name that needs no introduction in the world of cinema. He is a force to reckon with in the industry today. Leo in the role of Jack Dawson in James Cameron's Titanic will always remain iconic and that chocolate boy looks made many have a crush on him. However, the actor once shared that he almost quit acting because of that 'pretty image', as he did not imagine that for himself when he started out. Keep reading to know more about this interesting throwback!

The Cameron-directed film featured Kate Winslet opposite DiCaprio, and the two catapulted to success after the movie came out. Both the actors were reportedly overwhelmed by the immense success the film received. It even won multiple Academy Awards in different categories.

As per a report in The Fan Carpet, Leonardo DiCaprio hated the pretty boy image he had on Titanic. So much so, that he even contemplated quitting acting. Years ago, he shared how the media haunted him and how he feared that he would typecast. He said, "At first, I hated the way I was turned into a pretty boy as if that was all that was expected of me. It made me almost want to stop acting for a while because the attention that was focused on me was not where I wanted to take my career."

Leonardo DiCaprio added, "I didn't want to do romantic films or anything that exploited my image or appearance. I also kind of had to be more careful about the friends I was hanging out with. I was living a pretty big life for a while and then that just gets tiresome."

Luckily for us fans, Leonardo DiCaprio did not get typecast as a romantic actor, and we got to see him several different characters reflecting his calibre and range as an artist.

On the professional front, Leo is all set to impress the fans once again with his collaboration with Martin Scorsese for the film, Killers of the Flower Moon.

For more such throwbacks, stay tuned to Koimoi!

Must Read: When Jennifer Lawrence Jokingly Confessed That She Was A 'Predator' Who 'Accidentally' Hit On Other Women's Husbands: "I Don't Ask If People Are Available"

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When Leonardo DiCaprio Disliked His 'Titanic' Jack Dawson Image & Almost Wanted To Give Up Acting: "I Hated The Way I Was Turned Into A Pretty Boy"

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Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet catapulted to success after James Cameron's Titanic came out in 1997. Read on to know more!

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Leonardo DiCaprio appeals to teenage girls and young women with his outstanding beauty and star image as a pretty boy stardom.

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[Leonardo Dicaprio] Love Me Like You Do (Lyrics+Vietsub) (2020)

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[Leonardo Dicaprio] Love Me Like You Do (Lyrics+Vietsub) (2020)

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Even years later, many people are still fascinated by Leonardo DiCaprio's youthful appearance, and here's a fan-made video showcasing his beautiful star persona.

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[Leonardo Dicaprio] Love Me Like You Do (Lyrics+Vietsub)

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From budding actor to buff film star on a yacht: A look at Leonardo DiCaprio's dramatic physical transformation through the years （2023）

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From budding actor to buff film star on a yacht: A look at Leonardo DiCaprio's dramatic physical transformation through the years （2023）

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The drastic change in Leonardo DiCaprio's appearance cannot be ignored, and it reflects a major shift in his star image.

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A look at Leonardo DiCaprio’s physical transformation

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He made his screen debut on the TV series The New Lassie in 1989 and rose to prominence with roles in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Romeo + Juliet.

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DiCaprio dated many very young women and would not date women over the age of 25. Some believe he is financially powerful and well placed enough to do so, which has led to many debates about power dynamics.

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Leonardo DiCaprio keeps getting older, but his girlfriends stay the same age

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Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating history has been called into question once again. Meredith Clark writes that the online discourse surrounding his pattern of dating women no older than 25 ignores a real problem: he’s made dating younger women no longer cool

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News based on an analysis of DiCaprio's scandals found that people were tolerant of his questionable behavior because of his good looks and charisma, making him more morally liberal. That is, his celebrity image made him more freely tolerated.

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Leonardo DiCaprio, why don’t you date someone your own age? （2022）

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Leonardo DiCaprio, why don’t you date someone your own age? （2022）

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The news recounted the public opinion that DiCaprio would not date girls over the age of 25, echoing his troubled image as a queue animal in his youth.

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Leonardo DiCaprio, why don’t you date someone your own age? | Arwa Mahdawi

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Large age gaps in relationships aren’t automatically problematic, but it’s a major red flag if a man consistently dates women half his age

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Leonardo DiCaprio: The pretty boy whose face launched a serious career

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Leonardo DiCaprio: The pretty boy whose face launched a serious career

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While Titanic has brought Leonardo DiCaprio great success, it has also created a crisis for his star image and what will happen to his career as his face appears on walls all over the world.

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With Titanic being re-released next month to mark its 25th anniversary, Geoffrey Macnab looks at how its leading man Leonardo DiCaprio went from heart-throb to Oscar winner

It was that heady period when actor Leonardo DiCaprio's followers mobbed him with a fervour that put the behaviour of even the most diehard Beatles fans to shame.

At least with the Fab Four, the hysteria was spread around the band. With DiCaprio, it all centred on him.

You can still see the footage on YouTube: crowds of teenagers outside London's Odeon, Leicester Square, shrieking out "Leo, Leo, Leo" before the UK premiere of James Cameron's Titanic - the hit 1997 film is being re-released next month.

He landed the role at 20 years old. But with his epicene good looks, he seemed far younger.

He cut a diffident figure on the red carpet, waving politely at the onlookers, seemingly not realising that he was about to be skyrocketed to worldwide stardom.

News reports claimed that "hormonally-charged" adolescent girls had camped out for 12 hours or more just to catch a glimpse of him.

If DiCaprio caused mayhem at Titantic's premiere in London, he left downright havoc in his wake when the film reached Tokyo.

"The streets looked as if Godzilla was running amok," one US news station reported of the stampedes. What was next? Would success spoil DiCaprio? How would his career evolve when his face was already plastered on walls the world over? These were questions worrying even his admirers.

The fanatical devotion of his younger fans didn't seem to faze the actor himself, at least at first.

"It's fun... a nice, refreshing thing," DiCaprio commented early in his career. It was a naive remark. That level of attention soon became unbearable. DiCaprio was a marked man.

He has spoken of his alarm at waking up in his mum's guest room, where he still lived in LA, and discovering several SUVs parked outside, full of paparazzi determined to take his picture.

"They just kept following me... every day of my life," he said in amazed indignation.

Cinemagoers swooned over him. Many watched Titanic multiple times, perhaps hoping that if they saw it often enough, he might end up surviving the sinking ship.

In one of the film's famous scenes, DiCaprio's character Jack rests his arm on the top of a door in the freezing Atlantic Ocean while his beloved Rose, played by Kate Winslet, lies on top of it waiting to be rescued.

His death, probably from hypothermia, only added to his romantic mystique. His career had barely started but he was already arguably the biggest celebrity in the world.

DiCaprio wasn't even a trained actor. He had begun his big screen career with a part in sci-fi comedy horror Critters 3 (1991) in which he shared the screen with fuzzy, flesh-eating aliens from outer space. He had done plenty of TV.

What he considered his first proper movie role was as a young Jack the lad in the controversial Drew Barrymore/Sara Gilbert erotic thriller Poison Ivy (1992).

The movie, about a teenage friendship turned sour, included lesbianism, incest, and suicide, and was attacked at Sundance for being politically incorrect. Sadly, by then, DiCaprio had ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Speaking to The Independent this week, Poison Ivy's director, Katt Shea, insists it wasn't her decision to edit DiCaprio out of the movie. She adored him.

"The part [of Guy] was for somebody who was kind of bullying the character played by Sara Gilbert. I couldn't settle on an actor for it. It was only a very small part, a few lines. Leonardo came in and read for it and he wasn't right for it but all I knew was I wanted this guy in my movie," she recalls.

"He was just incredibly magnetic." DiCaprio was too sweet-natured to play a bully. "Leonardo doesn't have a mean bone in his body," Shea says. He had a lengthy monologue insulting Gilbert's character, but it was taken out.

"I just loved him. I tried to keep him in the movie. I tried to keep the lines in the movie but eventually the executive at New Line overrode me and forced me to cut him out. I didn't agree with that to the extent that I kept him in the credits even though his lines were cut. I thought, you know, I want him to get his residuals."

At the wrap party, Shea had to tell Leo that his lines were cut. "It was heartbreaking, really heartbreaking. I thought he was fabulous," she says.

In spite of this humiliating reversal, it was apparent from the starring roles he quickly landed in subsequent films - released only a year later - that Shea was right about DiCaprio's star power.

In the biographical coming-of-age drama This Boy's Life (1993), he starred as Robert De Niro's stepson, the writer Tobias Wolff, whose memoir the film is based on, and in romantic drama What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).

DiCaprio, then only 19, received his first Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role as Johnny Depp character's younger brother, the mentally challenged Arnie.

The camera loved him. It wasn't just his smouldering good looks. A fiery, emotional quality shone through, too. He had solid counterculture credentials.

His father George DiCaprio was a distributor of underground comic books and was best friends with Fritz the Cat creator, Robert Crumb. DiCaprio had been cast as a heroin-addicted high-school sports star in The Basketball Dairies (1995) and was adept at playing rebels and outsiders.

It was little surprise that he was initially resistant to appearing in something as mainstream and vanilla as Titanic.

Director Cameron said in a recent interview with People magazine that DiCaprio thought the project was "boring" and didn't want to be a leading man anyway. It took some persuading to get him aboard Titanic.

Largely thanks to DiCaprio's presence, Cameron's shipwreck saga, which the director had pitched as Romeo and Juliet at sea, went on to make over $2bn at the box office.

Generally, when actors reach this level of popularity, it's downhill all the way. Against the odds, though, DiCaprio, now 48, has thrived.

Since Titanic's success, he has racked up multiple Oscar nominations. He has also become a respected producer through his company Appian Way, making a string of well-received environmental documentaries such as Before the Flood (2016), about the threat of climate change, and Cowspiracy (2014), which explored the impact of animal agriculture on the environment.

The same traits that distinguished the actor at the start of his career are still evident. He is both mischievous and wholesome, a very clean-cut rebel - and one who always seems to have a cause.

He may be wrestling a bear, as he famously did in 2015's The Revenant, a role which won him an Oscar, or in a catatonic torpor after a Quaalude binge, as seen in 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street, but he holds onto his dignity.

Like the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013), he has a detached, calculating quality and often seems aloof from the events in which he is participating.

Not long after Titanic, DiCaprio starred in Danny Boyle's The Beach (2000), taking over a role as a backpacker originally earmarked for Ewan McGregor. The film wasn't warmly received.

DiCaprio was nominated for a Golden Raspberry award for worst performance of the year. Ironically, the film's relative failure had a balming effect on his career, cooling down the hysteria which surrounded him.

Several of DiCaprio's later movie characters were similar to Jack in Titanic. In one of his best roles, as the reckless young con artist Frank Abagnale in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), he again uses his trademark charm to cross social boundaries, but this time he is busy hoodwinking his victims. They like him so much that they half enjoy being swindled by him.

When he played Amsterdam Vallon, the Irish thief out to avenge his father's death in Martin Scorsese's The Gangs of New York (2002) set in the mean and muddy slums of the 19th-century Big Apple, one US reviewer complained that DiCaprio was "too pretty for the neighbourhood".

It's a familiar criticism. Leonardo was so young and handsome that it seemed incongruous to cast him in darker dramas.

However much make-up or facial hair he wore, or inner angst he projected, he couldn't quite turn himself into a Marlon Brando or De Niro.

The collaboration between DiCaprio and Scorsese may have started as a marriage of convenience - to get his movies financed the director needed the most bankable young star available - but it has yielded some memorable work.

Their partnership has also now endured for more than 20 years. Their sixth feature together, Killers of the Flower Moon, is due to be released later this year.

The Wolf of Wall Street is the most unlikely of the projects hatched by the duo. Playing crooked stockbroker Jordan Belfort, DiCaprio uses his trademark charm to make an unscrupulous and objectionable character seem likeable. This was also the movie in which he at last cut loose. His earlier collaborations with Scorsese were on the earnest side.

Now, he was popping pills, crashing sports cars, having drug-fuelled sex, tossing dwarves - and showing a hitherto unexplored flair for gross-out farce.

The golden boy from the late 1990s was playing villains, for example his sleekly malevolent southern aristocrat in Django Unchained (2012), and sleazy has-beens like his aging TV western star in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

Since Titanic, DiCaprio had been very astute in always seeking out the best directors: Spielberg, Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, and Alejandro González Iñárritu amongst others.

As he explained on a 2020 edition of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, "you really bank on the filmmaker".

"After having read so many great screenplays that turned to dog shit in the wrong hands, you actually realise the filmmaker is the one who elevates material and brings things to it that you could never have foreseen. It's worth seeing it through their eyes," he said.

A quarter of a century after Titanic, the paparazzi's obsession with DiCaprio has waned.

There is no longer mass hysteria whenever he sets foot in Tokyo or attends a Leicester Square premiere.

Back in the late 1990s, many were predicting that following such a huge hit, his career would inevitably flounder - that he would go down with the ship that made his name.

Instead, in the intervening years, the former teen star has turned himself into a full-blown and highly versatile Hollywood heavyweight.

'Titanic' is re-released on Friday, February 10.

www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/culture/leonardo-dicaprio-titanic-leomania-b2264741.html

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Leonardo DiCaprio: The pretty boy whose face launched a serious career

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It's 25 years now since the high point of "Leomania".

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Love for actor Leonardo DiCaprio has even become a word--Leomania.

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Leomania definition: (informal, 1990s) Enthusiasm for the actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

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DiCaprio's interview included a review of the past and an explanation and analysis of his own personality. He answered more about his image as a calm but positive dedicated actor.

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As brutal epic The Revenantis released, is Leonardo DiCaprio finally going to bag himself an Oscar? And does he even care? Cath Clarkemeets him.

Hi, I'm Leo." In a hotel room in Claridge's, Leonardo DiCaprio walks over from the window where he's been puffing on an electronic cigarette. He's smiling. A good sign. The actor is famously private and once walked out on a journalist who was rude to him. At 41, he is no longer the impossibly beautiful boy he was in Romeo + Julietand Titanic. I'm more dazzled by his knitwear - he's wearing a navy blue cashmere jumper so soft and expensive-looking that I have to resist the temptation to stroke him.

DiCaprio is a man with a lot to smile about; 2016 belongs to him. After being nominated four times for an Oscar, there's a very good chance he will walk up the aisle at the end of February to pick up the Best Actor award for The Revenant. Set in 1823, the movie depicts DiCaprio as real-life frontiersman Hugh Glass, who was left for dead in the Rocky Mountains by his hunting party. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu ( Birdman), it's a brutal, raw revenge drama that puts Glass through the wringer: attacked by a bear, mauled by Tom Hardy (who, let's face it, is scarier than a grizzly), buried alive and frozen so cold that he's forced to sleep in the still-steaming carcass of a horse. Yes, it's acting - but DiCaprio also lived it. The nine-month shoot in Canada and Argentina was so tough that some of the crew have described it as "a living hell."

Everyone talks about how down-to-earth DiCaprio is. I'm not sure that's true. How down-to-earth can you be when you've been one of the world's most famous actors since the age of 15? But what DiCaprio is not is a dick. Instead, he's friendly and self-aware, which might have something to do with his childhood. He grew up in Los Angeles, in an area he has jokingly called "Prostitution Alley," and from the moment he got a scholarship to a private school on the nice side of town he never wasted a moment or chance. Martin Scorsese, who has directed him in five movies, most recently The Wolf of Wall Street, says of working with DiCaprio that he "checks the stardom at the door."

It's early December when we meet and he has just been in Paris at the climate change talks. DiCaprio's fired up. He smiles, a little sarcastically, knowing that his environmentalism is the last thing most of us want to hear about from him. But working on The Revenant he saw the effects of climate change firsthand: "We had to shut down the film for months at a time because unprecedented weather patterns meant that a snowpack wouldn't melt," he says. Big grin. "See? I bring it around to climate change every chance I get."

You put yourself through a lot making The Revenant. In one scene your character is so hungry that he eats raw liver. Did you do that? Eat raw liver?
"I did. Because the fake liver they gave me didn't look real. Arthur, the Native American actor I was working with, had been eating liver all day while I was sitting there eating a big piece of Play-Doh. I had to give it a shot. But I only did it twice, and my reaction is up on screen. That's instinct."

It's a grueling movie to watch. On a scale of one to ten, how tough was it to make?
"Ten. But we all knew what we were signing up for. We couldn't recreate this with CGI. We all knew that we were stepping into a Fitzcarraldo, Heart of Darkness type of experience."

You were filming out in the elements. Any near misses?
"The whole movie! But the real nemesis was the cold, every single day. I had a special machine I called 'the octopus,' which was like a giant hairdryer with eight tentacles that I warmed my body with between takes."

Are you an outdoorsy, get-up-at-5am-for-a-hike kind of guy?
"I wouldn't say 5am, but I'm definitely outdoorsy. I love being immersed in nature, going to places in the world that are pristine and untouched by man. It's almost a religious experience when you go to a place like the Amazon and there's no civilization for thousands of miles."

You've had a few close shaves with death on your travels. You survived a shark attack in South Africa. And before that there was an incident with a parachute that failed to open. What goes through your mind in that situation?
"It's strange, because it gets right down to basics. It's no more dramatic than getting a parking ticket. You just feel like, 'Shit, why did this have to happen today? I'm so young, I have such a great life ahead of me, this really sucks.' There's nothing intensely profound about it, other than the will to survive."

So you didn't see images of your life passing before your eyes?
"Actually, yes: I've had a couple of experiences like that where you get the glossy photos of your whole life passing by in a second - that stuff really does happen. Certainly that happened with the parachuting thing."

Has surviving made you less afraid of dying?
"No. I'm still just as afraid of dying."

What would it mean to you to win an Oscar?
"Honestly? It's never ever what I'm thinking about when I'm making movies. There's nothing I've done for the specific reason of getting an award. Every single time you just go in there trying to bat a thousand, trying to give it your all."

You were 19 when you were nominated for an Oscar for What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Did you have a speech ready?
"No! I had absolutely nothing prepared. I didn't think there was a shot in hell I'd get it. It would have been an absolute catastrophe if I had."

You grew up in a tough part of LA, and have said you felt like an outsider as a kid. Has that feeling stayed with you in Hollywood? Do you ever still feel like that?
"I think I will always feel like an outsider. Marty [Scorsese] was the same. He came from the streets of New York and didn't feel like he belonged in Hollywood. I can remember getting rejected systematically by casting directors as a young kid. I felt like the biggest outsider there ever was, that I'd never belong in that club. I had this idea that one day they reach out, bless you and say, 'You are now part of this elite, you are the chosen one.'"

Do you feel blessed now?
"Hell, yeah!"

Which of your early films are you most fond of, looking back?
" This Boy's Life. That was 25 years ago, I was 15 years old, and I remember every single detail. Everything was so new to me. Watching Robert De Niro on set, seeing his dedication, was one of the most influential experiences of my life."

People talk about the difference between being an actor and being a movie star. You seem to have spent your thirties trying to shed the skin of a movie star with the kind of films you make. Is that fair?
"You know, the truth is that my attitude about the films I want to make has never changed. I made the same choices when I was 15 that I make now."

"I think Titanic was me veering away from the independent movies I was doing and trying something different. It was about saying, 'Okay, how do I use this opportunity to finance a film that I'm incredibly passionate about?' I think my ability to recognize great directors, or great material, has gotten better. Hopefully I've gotten better as an actor as the years have gone on, but the type of work I want to do has never changed."

How do you look back on the Leo-mania years?
"The what?"

The Leo-mania years, around the time ofTitanicin the late '90s. It's what the internet calls them.
"Really? It was a very surreal period. It was bizarre. I took a break for a couple of years because it was so intense. I needed to recharge and refocus."

You're 41 now. What's still on the to-do list?
"Right now, on my to-do list is to take a little time off."

You supported President Obama. You're a committed environmentalist. Would you consider running for political office?
"I don't know about that. I've been making this documentary on climate change for the last two years. If there was anything that I felt that I could do that would really contribute to what I think is the most important issue in human history - climate change - then I would love to take a higher position with it. But that doesn't necessarily mean political office. I think that a lot of the change needs to come from communal efforts, from groups and people who are trying to rattle the system. I think change is going to have to come from outside. You can't depend on politicians to make the right decisions."

The worldview in The Revenant is pretty bleak: people do terrible things to each other and nature is indifferent. Are you a pessimist?
"That's an interesting question for me as an environmentalist. You look back at that time [in The Revenant], and this surge west - extracting resources from nature, killing off indigenous Native American tribes, cutting down the trees and digging for oil - and you think, 'Oh my God, look how brutal we were.' But I wonder how people are going to look back at this time period now. We are destroying nature and killing species at a rate that is unprecedented. I just came back from Paris [and the climate change talks]. If we don't have a resolution coming out of Paris, we are destined for an incredibly bleak, dark future."

So, areyou a pessimist?
"No. I'm hopeful that we'll evolve as a species. But there is something about human nature that is very destructive."

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As brutal epic The Revenantis released, is Leonardo DiCaprio finally going to bag himself an Oscar? And does he even care? Cath Clarkemeets him.

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Howard Hughes was a larger-than-life filmmaker, tycoon, aviator - and obsessive compulsive. Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays him in the Oscar-tipped The Aviator, tells John Hiscock how his own milder form of the disorder gave him an insight into the role

For Leonardo DiCaprio, it was one of those moments when he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. There he was, in a South American rainforest, studying the effects of mercury poisoning in the Amazon, when he was confronted by a group of naked Indians.

"They began pointing at me and saying 'Leonardo DiCaprio from Titanic,' " he recalls with a helpless shrug. "It was amazing. That film has broken so many cultural boundaries."

Although he has just turned 30, the boyishly handsome actor is resigned to the fact that he will always be linked to Titanic, the 1997 Oscar-winning film in which he and Kate Winslet played tragic lovers on the doomed ship.

"That film is a phenomenon," he says. "It was immense and it's made so much money, but the fact that it's reached many different cultures is astounding to me. I know that no matter what else I do, it's going to be with me and be a part of me for the rest of my life. I don't have any regrets about it because it has given me great opportunities as an actor - and it's a pretty good film, too."

It was his role in Titanic that confirmed his status as Hollywood's leading heartthrob and ushered in the surreal Beatle-like fan worship that became known as Leo-mania. On the day we talked, word had leaked out of his whereabouts and photographers lurked outside the front door of the Los Angeles hotel where we met.

For DiCaprio, a thoughtful, introspective man, being the focus of attention whenever he ventures out is particularly irksome, although he accepts that there is little he can do about it.

"The paparazzi are horrible people for most of us and I wish they wouldn't follow me around and make my life miserable, but when I start talking about how we should fight them and how they are destroying everything, I feel such a shallow jerk because there are so many more important things in the world that people should be focusing on, not whether some rich celebrity is being photographed by paparazzi," he says.

The attention and fan fever are likely to heighten with the release of The Aviator, Martin Scorsese's epic film about Howard Hughes. DiCaprio is being widely tipped for an Oscar nomination for his performance as Hughes, the eccentric tycoon who became a millionaire oilman, a successful filmmaker, a record-setting pilot, an aircraft designer and the founder of an international airline, before ending his life as an insane recluse, terrified of germs and the outside world.

Hughes is a man who has fascinated DiCaprio since he read a biography of him eight years ago and mentioned it to the writer-director Michael Mann. Mann brought scriptwriter John Logan to the project and after much discussion they decided to concentrate on Hughes's life between 1927 and 1948, when he was a pioneering filmmaker and aviator.

Warren Beatty and others have toyed for years with the idea of a film about Hughes, but none came off the drawing board. "I think the reason no film has been done is because everyone has tried to focus on the older Howard Hughes, but it's not very cinematic because no matter how interesting he is, it's a man stuck in a hotel room for 15 years of his life with tissue boxes for shoes, talking on telephones," says DiCaprio.

Michael Mann was exhausted and needed a break from directing, having just finished filming Ali, so DiCaprio took the idea to Martin Scorsese, with whom he had worked on Gangs of New York. Because Scorsese has never liked flying, DiCaprio ripped off the title page before presenting him with the script. He need not have worried as Scorsese was riveted by Hughes's adventures and the story of greed, corruption and madness that surrounded them. Mann remained on board as a producer.

The Aviator begins shortly after Hughes's arrival in Hollywood to film Hell's Angels, which, at a cost of $4 million, was at the time by far the most expensive film ever made. It ends with Hughes's one and only flight at the controls of the Spruce Goose, the giant flying boat he designed and built. In between, among other things, the film covers his love affair with Katharine Hepburn, a stormy romance with Ava Gardner, his flight around the world in a record-breaking four days, his purchase of Trans-World Airlines, his feuds with Pan-Am, his victory over a corrupt US Senator and his fight with film censors for the right to show Jane Russell's cleavage on screen.

His public exploits notwithstanding, Hughes was a man who valued his privacy.

"He was the last private man in America," says DiCaprio. "Despite his ambition, he had a strong need for solitude and I can definitely empathise with that."

It is apparent to everyone but DiCaprio that there are other common denominators linking him and Hughes, apart from their love of privacy. Both had a taste for beautiful women - Hughes had affairs with Jean Peters, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner and countless starlets while DiCaprio has romanced a slew of supermodels such as Kate Moss, Helena Christensen, Eva Herzigova and Amber Valetta, and he is currently involved with Gisele Bundchen. Both men's romantic dalliances were regular fodder for the gossip columns, although the similarity seems lost on DiCaprio, who marvels at the thought of Hughes in his Hollywood heyday.

"Imagine being a billionaire at that time and being that good-looking and being a movie producer and a shy and private guy and so charming," he says. "It must have been a killer for the ladies. A killer." He grins at the thought.

Another trait DiCaprio shares with Hughes is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hughes's compulsions eventually fuelled his descent into madness in later years while DiCaprio has a firm control of his mild symptoms, and used them to good effect while portraying Hughes.

Not yet a recognised condition when Hughes was a sufferer, it increasingly took over his life, causing him to repeat phrases over and over, continually wash his hands and break down at the sight of a spot on another man's suit. A scene in the film depicts him stark naked in his screening room, unable to face anybody and conducting a deranged experiment with bottles of his own urine.

"I think being obsessive-compulsive tied into his women, too," said DiCaprio. "He was never able to stay with one woman because he looked on them like aeroplanes: he literally wanted to get the faster, sleeker aeroplane with the bigger turbines."

DiCaprio's disorder is more likely to take the form of making him reluctant to step on cracks in the pavement or something similar, although he has little difficulty overcoming his urges. "I'm able to say at some point, 'OK, you're being ridiculous, stop stepping on every gum stain you see. You don't need to do that. You don't need to walk 20 feet back and put your foot on that thing. Nothing bad is going to happen.'

"I can talk myself through it, you know, whereas Howard Hughes couldn't do that and people with hard-core OCD can't.

"During filming I let it all go and I never listened to the other voice, so I remember my make-up artist and assistant walking me to the set and going, 'Oh, God, here he goes again. We're going to need 10 minutes to get him to the set today because he has to walk back and step on that thing and touch the door in a certain way and then walk in and walk out again.'

"I let myself do it because I wanted that to come out. I was trying to be the character. It became real bothersome, even after the filming."

DiCaprio, smartly dressed in a dark suit and blue opennecked shirt with a wispy goatee, talks with humour and knowledge about film and his career and becomes passionate when the topic turns to the environment and the damage being done by the current US administration.

DiCaprio was born and grew up in Hollywood, although his parents, to whom he is still very close, separated when he was one year old. Rejected by a casting agent when he was 11, he tried again at 14 and landed an agent, who got him a toy commercial. Supporting roles in television series followed, but his first film role in Critters 3 gave little hint of his potential. Robert De Niro, however, spotted it and chose him for This Boy's Life and he was on the way.

His next film, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and he used his new-found recognition to take on a variety of roles, as a young gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead, a heroin-addicted youth in The Basketball Diaries, Arthur Rimbaud in Total Eclipse and Romeo in Baz Luhrmann's version of Romeo + Juliet.

Then came Titanic and the media deluge. But in the seven years since then he has made only four films, none of which was hugely successful. The first two, The Beach and The Man in the Iron Mask, were panned by the critics and the second two, Gangs of New York and Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, did not make the impression expected of them.

Undeterred, DiCaprio continues to choose his projects slowly and carefully, always seeking to expand his range and present himself with new challenges.

"Working with people like Martin Scorsese and watching classic old films that are really pieces of art, I want to make sure that if I'm going to invest my time and energy into something and give myself wholeheartedly to it, I want it to be something that lasts," he says thoughtfully. "I want it to be special and really original. For me, the three elements that have to be there are: it has to be a great script, with a great director and great people to work with."

For now he is happy to accumulate the millions of dollars that flood his way, living, if not frugally, at least not in the accustomed style of Hollywood stars. He owns one car, a Toyota Prius, and does not fly around in private jets. Instead, he is saving for a future in which he will be able to make a real contribution to the welfare of the world.

"I want to accumulate enough money to say to myself, 'OK, now I'm going to do something really great and beneficial for other people or the environment or children," he says earnestly. "That's my ultimate goal and you can hold me to that 30 or 20 years from now. I want to really give back, but for now I want to sustain myself and be able to choose the roles I want to do and not have to pay for too many lavish expenses.

"My idea is to conserve money for those reasons."

'The Aviator' is released in London on December 26 and nationwide on January 14.

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Howard Hughes was a larger-than-life filmmaker, tycoon, aviator - and obsessive compulsive. Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays him in the Oscar-tipped The Aviator, tells John Hiscock how his own milder form of the disorder gave him an insight into the role For Leonardo DiCaprio, it was one of those moments when he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

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Indulging in Leo-mania: Exploring Leonardo DiCaprio’s remarkable Hollywood domination （2020）

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Indulging in Leo-mania: Exploring Leonardo DiCaprio’s remarkable Hollywood domination （2020）

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In a career of more than 20 years working with many famous directors, he has grown from an ordinary person in Hollywood to an all-powerful legendary actor who cannot be limited to one type of film, and has created an outstanding brand for his star image.

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"I just want to keep doing what I'm doing and hopefully people will watch my movies." - Leonardo DiCaprio

Enigmatic and charming, Leonardo DiCaprio's presence on-screen is iconic and sublime. One might easily run out of words to describe this stellar performer. DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, on November 11, 1974, to Irmelin and George DiCaprio. Enjoying what can be labelled as a "counterculture childhood" as his parents were "bohemian in every sense of word", DiCaprio often described himself as Nick Carraway (the character that Toby Maguire played alongside him in The Great Gatsby), because as a child, he was "living so close to the entertainment industry yet feeling so far from it at the same time".

DiCaprio attended Seeds Elementary School and then John Marshall High School before attending the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies for four years, of which he dropped out in his third year due to his disdain for schooling and growing love for acting. He has also admitted having chosen acting as he wanted to earn money as quickly as possible. "I was always wondering how we were going to afford this and that," he once commented. "Acting seemed to be a shortcut out of the mess...I'm completely indebted to them in every single way." He credits his love for movies as well as his burgeoning career to his parents who fulfilled his every request and took him to various auditions without hesitation. "I wouldn't be doing any of this if it weren't for her, both my parents. She supported this little kid who said, 'I want to be an actor,' at 12-years-old, which is ridiculous, and she drove me to all these auditions. She's the only reason I'm able to do what I do." His father had pointed out Robert DeNiro to young Leo, urging him to watch closely because "this is what great acting looks like". A few years later, DiCaprio would find himself starring opposite DeNiro in The Boys' Life. DeNiro allegedly, on seeing Leo's audition tapes, went on to say, "I like the blonde kid. He's quite good".

Thankfully for Hollywood, Leo decided to pursue his childhood dream of becoming an actor; this interest was fuelled by the applause he received as a performer on stage. That said, in 1979, he was removed from the set of Romper Room for "being too disruptive". However, not deterred by the minor setback, he began appearing in several commercials by the time he turned 14, some of which included 'Matchbox cars by Mattel', 'Kraft Foods', 'Bubble Yum', 'Apple Jacks' and more. Later, he played the role of Glen in The New Lassie for two episodes.

While having difficulty finding an agent and getting rejected at more than 100 auditions, Leo grew increasingly disillusioned and, at one point, considered giving up his passion as the road to the big screen seemed a frustratingly long one. The agents wanted him to change his name to something slightly trendier, but Leo would not have it that way. His father encouraged him relentlessly by saying, "Go out there, son, and whatever you do, I don't care if you're successful or not, just have an interesting life", a message which stayed with him.

DiCaprio became a regular on television by the early 1990s, starring in an episode or two of The Outsiders, Santa Barbara and others. His breakthrough role, however, was the role of Gary Buckman, a troubled teen, in The Parenthood. The actor, who was quite observant from an early age, reportedly paid close attention to Joaquin Phoenix's performance in the film the series had been adapted from. This role earned him nominations at the 12 th Youth Awards.

Despite some promise, 1991 was a tough year for young DiCaprio and he was heavily criticised for his role as the stepson of a vile landlord in a low-budget horror film Critters 3. He was described as "your average, no-depth, standard kid with blond hair". Legend has it that this film taught DiCaprio a valuable lifelong lesson and, even now, he does not accept scripts that do not resonate with him. He has been quoted saying "[ Critters 3 is] possibly one of the worst films of all time. I guess it was a good example to look back and make sure it doesn't happen again".

DiCaprio had been hand-picked by Robert DeNiro out of 400 boys. In The Boy's Life, the veteran actor played Leo's stepfather and acted as his mentor on sets as well. Young and mischievous, Leo did not know how to behave on a major production and had to be strictly monitored. However, with a stringent scheduled, DiCaprio's role as the stepson earned him praise for his character growth; "a wide-eyed son to a rebellious greaser to an independent, sensitive young man". Following his effort in This Boy's Life, he received acclaim and an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as a mentally impaired boy and Johnny Depp's brother in the brilliant 1993 film What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Leo's portrayal of Arnie Grape was phenomenal; he made "Arnie's many tics so startling and vivid that at first, he is difficult to watch". His sharp and intense performance "made the raw, emotional neediness of those boys completely natural and powerful". As Arnie Grape, Leo's innocence and emotional sensitivity to the character helped deliver a tear-jerking performance.

Before earning his big break, however, he starred alongside well-known actors such as Sharon Stone and David Thewlis in films like The Quick and the Dead, Total Eclipse and others. Furthermore, the actor received an honorary mention for his role as Hank in Marvin's Room, alongside Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton; Leo being "deeply-gifted", managed to shine through even beside such extraordinary performers.

By 1997 the foundations of Leonardo DiCaprio's burgeoning career had been firmly established. However, James Cameron and his blockbuster film Titanic arrived to catapult DiCaprio to superstardom and he has not had to look back ever since. The actor, who was initially doubtful about playing the role of Jack Dawson, a self-sacrificing, young, impoverished artist, believed there were no complexities in Jack's character. It took a lot of convincing on his producer, Rae Sanchini, and co-star Kate Winslet's part to make him take up the role. Kate Winslet has said, "I was thinking, I'm going to persuade him to do this, because I'm not doing this without him, and that's all there is to it. I will have him.' Because he is fucking brilliant. He's a fucking genius, and that's absolutely why." Thus began a beautiful relationship between the duo who continue to be close friends even today.

Titanic emerged as the highest-grossing film, solidifying its presence as a Hollywood box office smash and turned DiCaprio into a superstar and teenage heartthrob overnight. What followed was the crazy 'Leo-mania', and Leonardo amassed millions of fans worldwide with his moving portrayal of the lovesick Jack Dawson. Unfortunately, he did not win the Oscar for his performance and thus began the saga of Leo's hard luck at the Academy Awards. However, he was floored by all the attention and love that was showered on him. "I have no connection with me during that whole Titanic phenomenon and what my face became around the world [...] I'll never reach that state of popularity again, and I don't expect to. It's not something I'm going to try to achieve either."

Following a few unsuccessful commercial stints, in 2002, he finally landed two hit features in Catch Me If You Can and Gangs of New York; the latter marked the beginning of his association with Martin Scorsese. Leo later went on to become Scorsese's blue-eyed boy (literally) and starred in many successful feature films. He was praised for his "breezy and charming nature" which could be "delightfully persuasive, deceptive, flirtatious and sometimes tragic".

Martin Scorse and Leonardo DiCaprio. (Credit: ©A.M.P.A.S.)

Hollywood's humble and down-to-earth 'it' boy has been Scorsese's "perfect muse". Recommended to him by DeNiro as "impressive", the director cast him in his films and has been thanked by DiCaprio numerous times for teaching him "about the cinematic art form". Marty gushed over Leo's brilliance by saying, "A key thing about Leo - and I always tell him this - is he's a natural screen actor. He could have been in silent films. It's the look on his face, the look in his eyes. He doesn't have to say anything. It just reads, and you can connect with him. Not everybody is like that." He further said that Leo was responsible for restoring his "movie mojo".

DiCaprio has enjoyed a wonderful career to date, one which has seen him collaborate with legendary directors like Quentin Tarantino, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg and more, delivering incredible performances with every passing movie. While he keeps getting bigger and better and cannot be pigeonholed into a particular genre, his emotionally complex and explosive roles are scattered all over the spectrum; starting from playing a scallywag to a notorious gangster, from a vicious plantation owner to a lovesick billionaire, from a fraudster stockbroker to a dream-thief, to a mentally impaired adorable young brother to a fading Hollywood star; Leo has done it all (although, I would say that he definitely has a knack for playing fraudulent billionaires).

Leonardo DiCaprio is not a classic American method-actor; he does not use anecdotes from a character's personal life. He has certain groundbreaking ideas and mysterious tricks up his sleeve which often leaves the director spellbound. The actor has ruled the hearts of the audience for decades with his boyish charm and exquisite mastery over his craft. However, as compensation, Leo has had to give up his 'award-winning luck'. 2016 proved to be a curse-breaker for him, as he finally won the Academy Award for his brilliance and resilience in the film The Revenant, after being nominated for the sixth time. Cheered on by the audience, Leo's win was the most desirable. It would have been a shame had he not won the much-coveted Oscar for, like Hugh Glass, he showed unwavering courage and determination while preparing for the film; despite being a vegetarian, he went to the extent of consuming an actual raw liver to add realism to the film. Leo's gut-wrenching portrayal of a helpless man surviving by virtue of his will to live made him stand out from the rest. "I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of the most difficult things I've ever had to do", he was quoted saying, "whether it's going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. I was enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly."

As an environmentalist and philanthropist, his acceptance speech included his growing concerns about climate change, and he concluded his speech by saying, "Let us not take this planet for granted, I do not take tonight for granted", which received thunderous applause from the audience and offered the greatest insight into his desire that grows much further than cinematic achievement.

In his initial years, DiCaprio has been vehemently criticised for being "a Hollywood everyman". However, within the last two decades of his career, by dint of merit and perseverance, he has curated a brand "of excellence". Tarantino, who is always praising his long-time friend, compared Leo's limited presence in multiplexes to that of Dwayne Johnson and the like, by saying, "One of the things I like about Leo is he just doesn't plug himself into two movies a year...he kind of stands alone today, like Al Pacino or Robert De Niro was in the '70s, where they weren't trying to do two movies a year - they could do anything they wanted, and they wanted to do this. So that means this must be pretty good." Its praise from Tarantino, of course, which may go to explain why Leo played the role of Rick Dalton, a Hollywood star with his career and beauty fading, in Tarantino's acclaimed film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

Fans are waiting eagerly for Leonardo DiCaprio's next film, Killers of the Flower Moon at Paramount, which is yet another Scorsese-DiCaprio combo. The film is supposedly about the FBI investigations regarding the Oklahoma murders in the 1920s which allegedly had underlying ties to oil deposits. In tandem, he will be starring in Adam McKay's Netflix comedy Don't Look Up featuring an ensemble cast including Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Timothee Chalamet, Kid Cudi, Matthew Perry and Ariana Grande; however, the production of the film has been delayed due to the ongoing pandemic.

Loved and adored by all, Leo has found his tribe at Hollywood which includes A-listers Brad Pitt, Kate Winslet, Jonah Hill, Luka Haas, Kevin Connolly, Tobey Maguire, Armie Hammer, Bradley Cooper, Cameron Diaz, Tom Hardy to name but a few. Kate Winslet, who has been alongside the actor from the very start, even teared up during his Academy Award acceptance speech, having predicted, "I feel very strongly that it may possibly be Leo's year." Winslet even gushed about his acting prowess: "He's a stronger actor at this moment than he's ever been...I think he's more handsome than he's ever been".

Named Leonardo because his pregnant mother, who worked at Uffizi Gallery in Florence, was looking at a portrait of Leonardo DaVinci one day when he kicked, the actor was established in the arts from the very beginning. His father "being the man that picks up on cosmic messages, said that 'His name must be Leonardo'", a sentiment and belief that is typified from DiCaprio's very early attempts to crack Hollywood.
"If you can do what you do best and be happy, you're further among in life than most people."

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Indulging in Leo-mania: Exploring Leonardo DiCaprio's remarkable Hollywood domination

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As the enigmatic and charming Leonardo DiCaprio turns 46 today, we chronicle the actor's burgeoning journey in Hollywood while wishing him happy birthday.

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“His Brand Is Excellence”: How Leonardo DiCaprio Became Hollywood’s Last Movie Star (2019)

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“His Brand Is Excellence”: How Leonardo DiCaprio Became Hollywood’s Last Movie Star (2019)

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He is very low-key off camera, and does not even use Twitter to promote himself, and rarely talks about his life, creating a mysterious star image.

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“His Brand Is Excellence”: How Leonardo DiCaprio Became Hollywood’s Last Movie Star

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A look into how Leonardo DiCaprio became Hollywood’s last movie star and whether Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ will extend or break the streak.

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Starring in Titanic was a huge success and became a world-famous star

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Starring in Titanic was a huge success and became a world-famous star

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Outstanding beauty and handsome boy image

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Outstanding beauty and handsome boy image

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HOW LEONARDO DICAPRIO BECAME A CLIMATE ACTIVIST

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HOW LEONARDO DICAPRIO BECAME A CLIMATE ACTIVIST

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Summarizing many of Leonardo DiCaprio's many concrete actions for the protection of the environment, the speech at the White House at the age of 24, the Environmental Defense Fund, as well as the documentary chapter and the many donations prove the authenticity of this stellar image of him as the best known climate activist.

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When accepting his Best Actor award for The Revenant in 2016, DiCaprio used his platform to address the issues close to his heart:

' The Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world - the world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production had to move to the southernmost tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.

'We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the Indigenous peoples of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this, for our children's children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed.

'I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted; I do not take this night for granted.'

If only all Hollywood actors were as dedicated as this to taking climate action...

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How Leonardo DiCaprio Became A Climate Activist

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From his childhood dream to become a marine biologist to meeting Al Gore, here's how the Hollywood star has been on a mission to save the planet for most of his life

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With the release of his first feature-length documentary, The 11th Hour, his stardom as a director and environmentalist began to manifest itself in concrete works.

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Critic’s Notebook: Leonardo DiCaprio’s turn in ‘The Revenant’ proves it’s time to stop holding his popularity against him （2016）

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Critic’s Notebook: Leonardo DiCaprio’s turn in ‘The Revenant’ proves it’s time to stop holding his popularity against him （2016）

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By analyzing the roles played he breaks the façade of popularity and well known as handsome as porcelain appearance. He utilizes his aura of stardom to apply him freely and flexibly to film assignments. His dedication to the art of cinema is obvious to anyone who has followed his adventurous career.

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Success for an actor - yes, even one of the classic Hollywood mold - can be a mixed blessing.

For Leonardo DiCaprio, "Titanic" was both the greatest thing that ever happened to his career - the film that cemented his status as a box office megastar - and the movie that threatened to imprison him in a bubble of lucrative romantic kitsch.

Having grown up on screen and in the gossip-addicted media, DiCaprio has been easy to underestimate. Which supermodel is he sleeping with now? How much did his last movie kill - or tank - at the box office?
OSCARS 2016: Full coverage | Oscars quiz | Ballot
A prodigy who earned his first Oscar nomination at 19 for his performance in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and an alumnus of Martin Scorsese's on-the-set graduate school, DiCaprio has matured into an actor with a deep respect for film tradition. Instead of fattening his wallet with franchises, he has bestowed his bankable stardom on directors pursuing auteur visions.

He has also put his outsize celebrity to worthy use, bringing wider attention to urgent environmental causes. Yet Leo the playboy tabloid sensation has been difficult to shake.

In certain snarkier precincts of Twitter, the all-grown-up fair-haired boy can't win for winning. When DiCaprio took home a Golden Globe for his performance in "The Revenant" this year, the bigger story, at least on the Web, was his reaction to getting bumped by Lady Gaga as she tried to scoot past him on her way to the podium.

The moment, captured on a Vine loop, was ubiquitous on social media for 48 hours. You can bet that DiCaprio will be extremely careful to steer clear of any famous rear ends at Sunday's Academy Awards, where he's the heavy favorite to take the Oscar for his tortured portrayal of the vengeful fur trapper in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's visually entrancing (if dramatically frostbitten) film.

Before continuing this DiCaprio defense, I have a mea culpa to make. In an Oscars story I wrote some years back comparing British acting sophistication with blunt American realism, I used DiCaprio to clinch my case that thespians on the other side of the pond have a decided advantage when it comes to rhetorical panache and literary polish.

I still believe that actors weaned on Shakespeare and steeped in a tradition that encourages regular commuting between stage and screen are better equipped to handle certain dramatic challenges. But where I would differ with myself today is in the implication that this somehow translates into artistic superiority.

My biases as a drama critic were showing. The theater relishes eloquence, intellectual debate, emotion dredged up from the sea floor by language. Film, a more visual medium, has other ways of communicating meaning.

DiCaprio is a purely cinematic creature. His strengths as an actor are magnified on screen, and his weaknesses are easily concealed. The stage is not his métier. When in "The Aviator" Cate Blanchett's Katharine Hepburn asks DiCaprio's Howard Hughes whether he shares her passion for the theater, the answer comes back a terse "no." It would be easy to imagine that Scorsese had surreptitiously filmed this exchange on a set break.

Not that DiCaprio has shirked his Shakespeare. Before "Titanic," there was Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet," a thoroughly Luhrmann-ized take on the play, the iambic pentameter inserted into a pop cultural pinball machine.

With his delicate features, brimming eyes and sashaying forelock, DiCaprio was born to play romantic youth of Romeo's fetching ilk. He undeniably brought an ardent interiority to Romeo's solitary musings, but he was even more affecting in his silences - spying Claire Danes' Juliet through a fish tank in the banquet scene or worshiping her body in the few stolen moments fortune permits them before their tragic end.

Young DiCaprio is a different entity from today's mature version. The transition, no surprise to anyone who has survived puberty, had its awkward patches - that phase when his adult skin was still being worn like a borrowed suit.

Scorsese used DiCaprio perhaps most effectively in this period, casting him in roles (Amsterdam Vallon in "Gangs of New York," Billy in "The Departed") in which he has to prove his manhood. But the boy is still visible beyond the five o'clock shadow, and there are moments when, battling more virile foes, he shrinks in stature.

Now that he's settled into adulthood, one thing can be said with certainty: DiCaprio shines brightest when he doesn't appear to be acting. In big dramatic moments - anything that reeks of a test - he can become self-conscious. Some actors (Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis) revel in the chance to display their technical mastery; artifice, in their hands, supports rather than undermines naturalism.

But these actors tend to come from theatrical backgrounds. DiCaprio, by contrast, excels when he behaves rather than acts, when the camera seems to catch him unawares. He has credibly handled accents when required (only a persnickety South African would object to his Commonwealth twang in "Blood Diamond"), and he always seems game for playing against the princely type of his genetic jackpot. But he's at his best when he's locked inside his character, when instinct has control of the wheel and craft can take a breather.

Savoring once again his work in "Gilbert Grape," I couldn't help being impressed by the way he neither overplays nor underplays a character with a developmental disability. Lasse Hallström's film doesn't turn Arnie's condition into a symbol, and DiCaprio is content to stick to the moment-to-moment truth of Arnie's scenes without trying to connect the emotional dots for us. He allows the movie to do that for us.

This naturalistic immersion, once the product of youthful high spirits, now requires more discipline to achieve. Scorsese's camera can't get enough of DiCaprio's charisma in "The Aviator" - he's seldom out of the frame, and when he is the film sinks - but the more theatrical Howard Hughes' craziness becomes, the more strenuous DiCaprio's performance seems.

If his breakup scene with Blanchett's Hepburn is more moving than the long stretch when Hughes' psychiatric symptoms have him on self-imposed lockdown, it's because DiCaprio's anguish is always more believable when he's giving form to the mute pain of characters who aren't themselves fully formed. He has a special talent for portraying men who have confused their mask for their face. Impostors, such as Jay Gatsby in Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" and Jordan Belfort in Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" (which is hands down DiCaprio's best performance), come naturally to him.

It would be easy to hypothesize why an actor who has come of age under merciless public scrutiny would have such sympathetic insight into characters whose identities are a charade designed to impress. But DiCaprio doesn't simply inhabit their stunted souls. He turns his unassumingly trenchant character studies over to filmmakers who can fit these figures to their age and glean the zeitgeist from a personality.

DiCaprio's fierce commitment to serving the expansive visions of directors is one reason he will likely be hoisting an Oscar on Sunday. His grueling performance in 'The Revenant" may not be able to compensate for the screenplay's deficiencies. (The film's sweeping visual majesty surpasses the middling revenge drama that never approaches anything near Shakespearean heights.) But just as he gave himself over to the eccentric violence of Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained," DiCaprio submits himself completely to the relentless endurance test of Iñárritu's wilderness fable - a movie in which tangling with a grizzly bear is the start rather than the pinnacle of the protagonist's agonizing marathon.
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DiCaprio received some flak on Twitter for an awards campaign emphasizing the physical toll of filming "The Revenant." The movie is a catalog of gruesome human suffering, and the film, shot in arduous outdoor conditions, looks as if it must have been a cold, soggy hell to make.

But the idea that gold trophies should be doled out to overpaid Hollywood stars based on the hardship of their working conditions didn't sit well with scribes vaguely mindful of all those blue-collar workers wrenching their backs for a far less glamorous existence. Fair enough. But the reason this backlash didn't bruise DiCaprio's image is that he didn't need to eat a real bison liver or squish around in a horrifyingly real facsimile of a dead horse to prove his conviction.

His dedication to the art of the filmmaking is transparent to anyone who has been following his adventurous career. It's time to stop holding DiCaprio's popularity against him. He may be in possession of one of Hollywood's most recognizable faces, but those porcelain good looks aren't limited to puppy-dog expressions and seductive winks. Torment might impress academy voters, but few are as good as DiCaprio at portraying numbness.

If his star radiance is an auteur's best friend, it's because of his willingness to offer it so freely and flexibly to the cinematic task at hand. At 41, this former teenage heartthrob has entered his artistic prime.
charles.mcnulty@latimes.com MORE: In China, no 'Revenant,' but mad Oscar buzz for Leonardo DiCaprio Leonardo DiCaprio's 23-year stretch of Golden Globe nominations and wins 'The Revenant's' costume designer based Leonardo DiCaprio's look on monks

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Critic's Notebook: Leonardo DiCaprio's turn in 'The Revenant' proves it's time to stop holding his popularity against him

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His expected Oscar for 'The Revenant' would only enhance his reputation as an actor of maturing depths and an all-in attitude irresistible to auteurs.

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Limitations brought about by super popularity and image

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Limitations brought about by super popularity and image

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Leonardo DiCaprio: The Q Interview (2003)

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Leonardo DiCaprio: The Q Interview (2003)

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After the huge success, Leonardo DiCaprio chose to take a break and be more self-reflective in his choice of roles.

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Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster                     （edited by Kevin S. Sandler, Gaylyn Studlar ） 

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Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster                     （edited by Kevin S. Sandler, Gaylyn Studlar ） 

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Leonardo DiCaprio says he can't and doesn't want to achieve the popularity status he had during Titanic.

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On April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg off Newfoundland. Taking more than 1,500 souls with her, Titanic sunk on what was intended to be the glorious maiden voyage of the biggest, most expensive, and most technologically advanced ship ever built. In 1997, James Cameron's Titanic, the most expensive and technologically advanced movie ever made, hit theaters.

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In 1996, DiCaprio was cast in the role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. His star image as a blonde pretty boy appealed to many, and the excellent script and the chemistry between the female leads made the movie a success.

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The young leader of an American street gang played by Leonardo DiCaprio in "Gangs of New York" marks the transformation of his star image from a handsome boy to a mature actor, with a more low-key and strong performance style.

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Gangs of New York (2002) ⭐ 7.5 | Crime, Drama

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Leonardo DiCaprio's changing looks after he shows off dramatic weight loss in Malibu （2022）

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Leonardo DiCaprio's changing looks after he shows off dramatic weight loss in Malibu （2022）

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This is a news story about his success in losing weight, and a comparison of his youthful appearance and body shape can be seen as a dramatic change.

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Wolf of Wall Street's Leonardo DiCaprio has shocked fans with his dramatic weight loss transformation - here's a timeline of the Hollywood veteran's looks over the years

Leonardo DiCaprio shocked fans with his dramatic weight loss in Malibu - here's a look back at the Hollywood veteran's transformation over the years.

Pictures recently went viral after the Titanic star seemingly ditched his dad bod in favour of a more slimline figure - cutting down the pounds.

The 47-year-old was snapped in a dressed-down look as he strolled the sunny streets while rocking a plain black t-shirt, some beige cargo shorts, and a pair of white trainers.

He looked almost unrecognisable as he topped off the chic yet casual look with a beige baseball cap and some oversized sunglasses.

The movie star has been photographed living it up on vacation in various tropical locations in recent months - and it seems as though Leo has dropped a substantial amount of weight.

1989

Snaps from over the years highlight his dramatic transformation and early pictures show a young slim Leo - sporting light blonde locks in his signature curtains style.

Pictured in 1989, Leo smiled for the camera while wearing a very bright out-there shirt. He was already well established in the industry at this point.

Born in Hollywood in 1974, he had already picked up his first roles in the late 1970s and 80s in Romper Room and Friends and The New Lassie.

1999

Ten years later, Leo appears in photographs taken on the Thai island of Ko Phi Phi Le as he shoots Danny Boyle's 'The Beach' which was released in 2000.

In his mid 20s at the time, DiCaprio scrapped his curtains and opted for a more youthful spikey hair cut and kept his athletic physique.

He looked completely different from his early days in acting and his dramatic transformation was even the feature point of the infamous film's cover.

It received terrible reviews and Leo was even nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor after starring in the flick.

2008

Almost another decade later and Leo changed up his hair yet again, opting for a now more mature look - sweeping it over to one side.

It was that year he starred in American spy thriller Body of Lies alongside Russell Crowe - set in the Middle East, it follows the attempts of the CIA and the GID of Jordan to catch "al-Saleem".

At the movie's premiere Leo cut a classy figure with his more mature hairstyle, keeping it simple in navy blue V-neck jumper and a pair of tight striped suit trousers.

2015

It was only seven years later that DiCaprio really changed-up his appearance again - now sporting a giant Viking-style beard and slicked-back hair.

He was pictured in Saint-Tropez at The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation's second annual gala - an organisation set up to "bring attention and funding to the protection of biodiversity, ocean and forest conservation, and climate change".

Now in his early 40s, he couldn't look further from his former self in The Beach snaps from 1999 - cutting a sophisticated figure in a fitted blue suit.

2020

Half a decade later and Leo had ditched the long beard, opting for stubble instead.

His facial hair isn't the only thing that had changed after pictures taken on the beach St Barts show Leo carrying an extra bit of weight - now sporting a full-on dad bod.

The less than flattering pictures show the film star on a holiday with his Argentinian-American model girlfriend Camila Morron.

Then 45-years old, he looked happy and relaxed as he took to the waters with a little swim with his 22-year-old partner as the pair rode the Caribbean waves together.

2022

Just two years later and after many tropical holidays together, Leo was pictured just days ago and has seemingly shed away his dad bod.

Looking slimmer than ever, the now 47-year-old looked as slim as his early acting days in 1989 as he stepped out for a solo walk in Malibu.

"He's looking really good," said one fan as he kept it casual in California.

After years of dramatic body transformations and hair cut switch-ups - it is hard to predict what DiCaprio will look like in another 10 years' time when he's in his 50s.
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Leonardo DiCaprio's looks over the years after he shows off dramatic weight loss

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Wolf of Wall Street's Leonardo DiCaprio has shocked fans with his dramatic weight loss transformation - here's a timeline of the Hollywood veteran's looks over the years

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Indulging in Leo-mania: Exploring Leonardo DiCaprio's remarkable Hollywood domination

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Indulging in Leo-mania: Exploring Leonardo DiCaprio's remarkable Hollywood domination

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In this story details Leonardo DiCaprio's stardom and troublesome constant stereotype of the blonde kid grows into a legendary actor capable of playing emotionally complex, explosive characters from all walks of life, who can do it all.

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Leonardo DiCaprio Transformation | The Hard Journey To Reach The Oscar Golden Statue

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This article presents Leonardo DiCaprio's roles from different periods of his films, with a vivid and high quality portrayal of complex roles. He is a very talented star who has her own style of acting and is recognized for it.

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The role of retarded Arnie,is perhaps DiCaprio's best performance to date. Mark W. Travis, a highly regarded international and Hollywood authority in the art of filming, defined the transformation of a character as "The actor disappears into a character so unreservedly that we are no longer watching the actor, but experiencing the character." In order to make this distinction we must look at Leo and then look at Arnie. We know Leo is an easygoing well to do person. He is always kind in his mannerisms, or at least in the Leo we see in interviews and reality television. Arnie is an intense character who is very complicated, with several dimensions. Leo transforms himself well using the mannerisms of a retarded person and exemplifies Arnie's innocence and cannot help but create a sense of sympathy for the viewer. Alec Baldwin from the New York Innovative Theater Awards comments "We do not see Leo as an actor putting up a great performance, but somewhere that Leo gets lost and the only thing remaining is Arnie." For a few hours, Arnie becomes a real character that the audience grows attached to. DiCaprio, uses a naturalistic style of acting letting the role come to him without having to adjust to the role itself, with the experience of living without a father (a common theme in the movie) to assist him into transforming into this role.
Style: DiCaprio uses the stereotypical retarded mannerisms throughout the movie in a naturalistic manner
Voice: The cliche slow and loud noises that are generally associated with a mental illness are well presented and Leo pulls them off well

DiCaprio's role of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street is arguably the best one of his late career, right next to The Great Gatsby. DiCaprio earned his fourth Oscar nomination for the role. Jordan Belfort goes from a life of poverty to becoming a rich, corrupt stockbroker who finds tremendous success. DiCaprio must embody someone who has tremendous lust and thirst of money, while also experience someone who is having the time of their life. Throughout the film DiCaprio shows that intensity in his eyes, that drive to make money and to enjoy his life. He must show the development of poor Jordan Belfort, who cared about his girlfriend and honesty to becoming a less devoted husband and father concerned only about taking drugs. To a great extent, DiCaprio does a good job of that, his style changes from soft-spoken and innocent at the beginning and progressively he gets louder, asserts more confidence even in the way he walks, and begins to care less about everything. The only minor problem we see in this role is we don't truly get lost into Jordan Belfort in the entirety of the movie. We can still see the Leonardo DiCaprio we know in many of the movies moments, such as during his early struggle that DiCaprio has actually experienced in real life. The character of Belfort should have always had that intense drive to be a stockbroker, and when towards the beginning that intensity isn't there.
Style: Well developed, and complex. His mannerisms change from the beginning to the end as Jordan Belfort goes from a poor man to owning Stratton Oakmont.
Voice: DiCaprio pulls off the New York accent wonderfully as he usually does.
Overall Grade: A-

Django unchained is where we see DiCaprio in a completely different role as the deplorable plantation owner Calvin Candie. Leonardo Dicaprio is by no means an indulgent and horrendous racist man. He was born in Hollywood California and lived there most of his life, they aren't even remotely racist in Hollywood California as far as I know. DiCaprio's style expresses anger as his predominant emotion throughout the movie, which is the staple of a villain. He walks with the swagger of someone who likes to be in control, he is loud and intense. This role is completely different from how we see DiCaprio, and it would be expected that Leo doesn't fulfill his role as well as he usually does, but instead he does a tremendous job and even draws some Oscar buzz. The drawback of attempting a completely different role is the shock factor, the audience is partly directed towards the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio is playing a villain, that they cannot truly be mesmerized in the character of Calvin.
Style: The strongest aspect of his performance, he is always intense and angry just as a villain should be.
Voice: Dicaprio develops such a hatred in his voice when he talks, it really contributes to making Calvin a deplorable character. The southern accent is not extraordinary but considering Leo has never been in touch with the southern side of the country I'say it's good enough.

For "The Departed" DiCaprio has to become a disturbed young cop, deprived of family and friendship that enters a dangerous undercover mission to take down one of the most prominent mafias in Boston. This role fit right in for DiCaprio, who again, gre up without a father and struggled with his mother. DiCaprio must show Billy Costigan as a lonely individual struggling to keep himself alive. DiCaprio does this exceptionally well, he shows concern and grief in his performance, and transforms well into the disturbed young man. The audience is able to once again lose the sense that Leonardo DiCaprio is on screen, and instead they start to fear for Billy's life.
Style: Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Billy as someone who is very unstable with a range of emotions, from carelessness to fear to anger and then to the ultimate psycho. Throughout the movie we see how Billy's past and how the undercover job changes him as a person. Leo starts off with almost a passive, weak style and progressively pushes himself to the brink of craziness expressing an anger in his eyes.
Voice: This is Leo's best accent performance, hands down. Throughout the movie, DiCaprio rocks the Boston accent without missing a beat, which attributes most to the transformation into character
Overall Grade: A

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The role of retarded Arnie,is perhaps DiCaprio's best performance to date. Mark W. Travis, a highly regarded international and Hollywood authority in the art of filming, defined the transformation of...

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Romeo + Juliet (1996) - Star-crossed Lovers Scene (2/5) | Movieclips

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Romeo + Juliet (1996) - Star-crossed Lovers Scene (2/5) | Movieclips

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A beautiful picture of a beautiful boy and girl falling in love

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Romeo + Juliet (1996) - Star-crossed Lovers Scene (2/5) | Movieclips

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In the interviews, he showed his star image as a polite and handsome boy who loves to smile.

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Leonardo DiCaprio "Marvins Room" 11/17/96 - Bobbie Wygant Archive

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DiCaprio did not perform well in "The Man in the Iron Mask", which deepened his star image as an actor with an angelic face whose acting skills are instinctive and smooth.

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The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) ⭐ 6.5 | Action, Adventure, Drama

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Frank Abagnale Jr, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, helped him get out of darkness and trouble, and also successfully challenged more complex and deep roles, gradually beginning to get rid of the single star image of a beautiful blond boy.

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Leonardo DiCaprio's performance in the movie managed to allay concerns that he didn't have enough weight to take on such a complex, powerful role.

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Read the Empire Movie review of The Aviator. Beneath the glossy surface there's a niggling lack of depth, but otherwise this is a grand,...

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In 2006, DiCaprio starred in the crime movie "The Departed", he for the role of the gang-related personnel to communicate with the study, and gained weight 15 list muscle. This is his more show tough guy strong image, but also reflects the explosive performance, in the physical transformation as well as completely invisible blonde beautiful boy shadow.

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Don’s Plum: the film Leonardo DiCaprio would rather forget

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Don’s Plum: the film Leonardo DiCaprio would rather forget

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As a member of "Pussy Posse", he was reported as a domineering dude who got into fights and didn't tip waitresses.

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Don's Plum: the film Leonardo DiCaprio would rather forget

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From a time when he was better known for carousing than acting, this embargoed 1998 film sees DiCaprio deliver a sparkly and sinister turn

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Leo, Prince of the City
News reports have portrayed DiCaprio with his group of friends in clubs with a lot of negative behavior, mostly unwarranted, violent impulsiveness. His reputation as a real bad boy has become widely known. He himself holds a derisive attitude toward negative images, believing them to be stereotypes of what a repulsive young actor should be.

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Hi Leonardo! You just seem to drain all my worries out of me when I'm watching one of your movies. You are a hell of a better actor than Brad Pitt and all those other shitty actors that some girls love to death. All I want to say before I sign off is that I don't think you are gay or bi and when some of my friends say they don't like you I am not ashamed to say that I am deeply in love with you. (Oh, and by the way, I'm a Calvin Kline sic model and I'm 21 years old!)
- posted on the "Leonardo DiCaprio Is a Hot Babe!" Website, May 31

T he furtive typing of teens in the Heartland is only the rawest expression of the global passion focused on the 23-year-old Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio (named after Da Vinci, and with a Mona Lisa smile). What can Leo's life be like at the center of this raging obsession? I went looking for Leo to find out - on the town in New York, where he can still be found most nights, as always, having a hell of a time.

I didn't find Leo at Jet 19, reportedly one of his hangouts, but I did meet a stockbroker named Ted who said he'd seen Leo at the Bubble Lounge recently. "I literally bumped into him," said Ted, laughing modestly. "I made a big impression on him."

Leo is six feet tall, according to the best-selling Leonardo DiCaprio, Modern-Day Romeo - Ted is five foot three. But he was wearing a very expensive suit. "I know if he saw me again, he'd remember me," he said, convinced. "I was like, 'Yo, Leo, dude, whassup?' And he was, like, sooo down-to-earth. We talked about chicks, y'know? He was just a regular guy, sipping Stoli-and-soda. Talking about chicks." Again he gave a dry little laugh.

At Shine, the hot new club on West Broadway - so hot, Leo goes there - I met a slinky 40-year-old woman in false eyelashes who was dancing with a 24-year-old man. She told me, "I will have him, one day. I will see him here, and he will make eye contact with me, and he will know that we were meant to be together for a brief affair. Because he is so sensitive."

The actress Susan Sarandon, who lives in New York, recently pushed her way through hordes of Leomaniacs at the premiere of The Man in the Iron Mask to get an audience with DiCaprio for her teenage daughter, Eva, and seven of her closest school friends. "He was totally adorable," said Sarandon. "I humiliated myself."

Leo's been making the scene in New York for so long, he was already becoming a sort of tourist attraction, like South Street Seaport; but it was never anything like it is now. "I remember him and Juliette Lewis outside a Saturday Night Live party at Rockefeller Center a few years ago, begging the clipboard troll-ettes, 'Come on, please let us in,' " gossip columnist Anita Sarko says. "Even at the Basketball Diaries party at the Hard Rock Cafe, no one was paying much attention to him."

But then came the billion-dollar-grossing movie, the 500 Leo Websites, the plethora of hype and the attentions of the rich and powerful ("Leonardo DiCaprio ... is an androgynous wimp," Senator John McCain grumbled recently), and Leo turned into "Leo." Now, venturing out at night with him feels like climbing onto the set of the Jerry Springer Show, says one of his close friends. "When he goes to a club, people start screaming and jumping over the security guards and elbowing and pushing to get near him."

And that's not just the civilians. "The models are all over him," says Jeffrey Jah, director of the club Life. "He's got rock stars, Puff Daddy, Donald Trump, going over to his table to sit with him. Leo just comes in to hang out with his friends."

Jah adds, "They never act up in here."
The Posse
"T hey" are the fun-lovin' guys you always see Leo around with. Even before there was Leomania, Leo always traveled with his pack of devotees, known in Hollywood circles as "The Pussy Posse." "They're all about seeing the girls," says a magazine photographer in New York who once had to sneak Leo and his boys, then the uninvited, into a Victoria's Secret event.

The group's core members constitute a frat house of young men, some of whom are actually famous, like Leo. There's Lukas Haas, who has not yet become Leo, and Tobey Maguire - the pensive youth in The Ice Storm - who is, perhaps, waiting to. There's Harmony Korine, the Gummo boy auteur, and David Blaine, the levitating magician, who was recently spotted zipping around town on his new motorcycle with Leo - they hit Moomba, Chaos, Veruka, and NV, where Mariah Carey had to wait in line to get a meeting. "I have fun with him, that's for sure," Leo said of Blaine two years ago when I was doing a story on the magician. "He'll do some pretty fucking crazy things. He's like a monkey with electrodes stuck to his head!"

And then there are the other guys in Leo's pack, who make up a kind of former-child-actor brigade: There's Jay Ferguson, once Burt Reynolds's wisecracking son on Evening Shade; Josh Miller, who played Keanu Reeves's little brother in River's Edge but never became Keanu Reeves; Ethan Suplee, who appeared briefly in Chasing Amy; Kevin Connelly, who has appeared on the WB; Scott Bloom, another aspiring actor; Justin Herwick, with whom Leo almost got himself killed over the California desert in 1996, when his parachute failed to open (his instructor released an emergency cord). The Leo men seem to like to play rough. "I like to do things that scare me," said DiCaprio.

An adjunct member of the pack is the heavy-haired Sara Gilbert of Roseanne, who was starring in Poison Ivy when Leo was just "Guy #1" in the script. "If they're a new Rat Pack, she's the Shirley MacLaine figure," says a young actor who's hung out with the crowd in L.A. "A lot of them have known each other a long time; they started out as child stars together." (That was back in Leo's Growing Pains days, during which "he was becoming a bit of a misfit in his classes," the best-selling Leonardo DiCaprio, Romantic Hero reportsgently. "Leonardo alarmed his teachers ... when he drew a swastika on his head as part of his improvised imitation of mass murderer Charles Manson.")

The posse "used to see each other at auditions all the time," says their young actor friend, "and a little competition rose up between them." In fact, Haas lost out twice to DiCaprio for plum roles - in This Boy's Life and What's Eating Gilbert Grape, for which DiCaprio won a Best Supporting Actor nomination. ("Why should I want to be him?" Haas snapped to Texas Monthly in 1996.)

"They were always betting on who would blow up first," says the actor friend. "Tobey was into more of a Tom Hanks track. Leo was modeling his career after Nicholson and De Niro." ("Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act," DiCaprio said in the best-selling Leonardo DiCaprio Album, which also recounts an early Leo memory - killing a pigeon - as well as the time his father, George, a "bohemian" comic-book trader, urged his son to go off and lose his virginity. Leo, then 6, declined.)

As the years went by, however, Leo was always the one getting the best parts, the best reviews, the most heat in the teen magazines. And now this. "The Titanic stuff has caused this big identity crisis. Some of them have completely lost their careers," the young actor says. "All they do now is hang out with Leo. If Leo wants to go to Paris, it's let's go to Paris. Las Vegas? No problem." DiCaprio was heard exclaiming to his table at Tomoe on Oscar night, "Let's rent a plane! I want to go to India!" "The people closest to him have Leomania worse than anyone," the actor says.

"They're like, 'How come he's getting all the attention and no one's paying attention to me?' " says another member of the group who's observed their "sibling rivalry" - which he says Leomania has made chronic. "They want to be with Leo like 24-7."

Some posse members even accompany DiCaprio on movie sets. In New York, they act as unofficial bodyguards, although it's unclear sometimes whether this is for his benefit or for theirs. "They get off on protecting him - they're always ready to start yelling and swinging," grouses paparazzo John Barrett, who admits to having chased Leo around town on several occasions. "They were rushing me outside Moomba" on the night of James Toback's after-party for the premiere of Two Girls and a Guy, says the photographer, sighing, "Here I am at my age dealing with a pack of little brats like that."

The posse even carries Leo's cash. Earlier this year, when DiCaprio rented a house in South Beach, "he trusted his entourage of friends to deal with his expenses, not carrying any money himself," confides The Leonardo DiCaprio Album. "According to his pal Ethan Suplee, 'Leo's cheap... . He'll look for a place in the street to park rather than use valet parking.'"

"I'm the cheapest bastard in the world," the ever-frank DiCaprio has said. "You never know, I may go bankrupt, or lose my career, or have a Hugh Grant situation."
Leo Takes New York
Leo discovered New York in 1994, when he came here to shoot The Basketball Diaries. In New York, "you could sit in a corner all day and probably have a more fulfilling time than traveling all over L.A. and seeing all the sights," said DiCaprio. How true. But Leo hardly sat watching the city pass him by; he jumped right in, and the press followed, naturally. "He hits Manhattan clubs ... and brawls with the locals," said Rolling Stone. "He seldom sleeps, so intense is his partying," Liz Smith wrote.

"We don't have gossip columns in L.A. watching everybody's every move," complains DiCaprio's publicist, Cindy Guagenti. "If people want to know something, they call the publicist."

"He started acting like an idiot," says one highly placed New York publicist (who wouldn't allow me to use her name because, she says, "everyone fears his power" - as if Leo were Louis XIV, whom he recently played). "He made a joke out of it, going to everything all over the place. He was like Sylvia Miles, except young and beautiful and talented."

"New York is like Leo's playground, his Disneyland," says an aspiring director who says he's frequented strip joints with Leo's posse in L.A. "They used to set off stink bombs at Sky Bar. But Leo's not going to act up out here now. Anyone in the of course, movie industry could be sitting at the next table. No one in the industry cares what he does in New York."

"They're kids. They act like kids," the redheaded hostess at Moomba told me, with a curling little frown. At Spy, where Leo has become what Liza once was to Studio 54, or Henny Youngman was to the Carnegie Deli, the French bartender griped, "He does not teep! He gets his friends go to the bar for his drinks. He was in here with Julie Delpy - I could not understand it. She's a very nice girl - French. He is cheap."

Leo worries about his image: "I don't want to be thought of as a party animal," he has said. Most of what gets reported about him hardly rates as Rat Pack behavior, however; it's more like Romper Room (which he appeared on at the age of 5). This March, Leo and the posse reportedly bombarded paparazzi with grapes from upstairs at the Mercer Hotel. ("That doesn't sound like Leonardo," Guagenti told the Daily News. "Does it?" asked the paper.) And Leo was spotted throwing litter off the Brooklyn Promenade onto cars traveling below on the BQE ("before speeding away in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes," said the New York Post). In April, Leo was seen sporting a shiner. "He got it horsing around with his friends," said a beleaguered-sounding Guagenti.

But DiCaprio's reputation as a true bad boy has become widespread enough for it to be made a joke of: Two weeks ago at the MTV Movie Awards, DiCaprio accepted his honor for Best Male Performance by video; the spoof that followed featured a crew swaddled in bandages, all saying DiCaprio had freaked out and assaulted them. Uh, ha, ha. And DiCaprio has said that in Celebrity, the next Woody Allen movie (where art always mocks life), he plays "a cocky young Hollywood actor, the stereotype of what a disgusting young actor should be."

The currently suppressed indie film Don's Plum - originally called Saturday Night Club - may provide an inadvertent glimpse behind the curtain shrouding the secret society of Leo and his friends, mostly because it was made and largely ad-libbed by Leo and his friends. The characters "sit around, smoke, talk, say 'bro' a lot, insult the waitress, try to have sex with girls in the back room, fight," says one person who has seen it.

Don's Plum was directed by former posse member R. D. Robb - also a former child actor - who has recently been "expelled" from the group, according to someone still inside it, for attempting to spin the film's straw into the Leo gold of a commercial release. DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, who in 1995 put up a scant amount of money to get the movie made, said no way.

Maguire, according to the $10 million lawsuit filed in L.A. Superior Court in April by David Stutman, the film's producer, became concerned that "improvisational comments he had made during the Film revealed personal experiences or tendencies that would undermine his public image," and so he leaned on his "longtime friend," Leo, to block it, although DiCaprio allegedly didn't much care whether anybody saw it or not. At one screening, DiCaprio said he " 'really, really liked the film,'" says Stutman's suit. "He jumped out of his seat several times, laughing, clapping, and high-fiving his friends."

"Do you girls masturbate at all?" Leo asks in one scene. "Stop looking at me like that - I'll fucking throw a bottle at your face, you goddamn whore."

The film was pulled from Sundance. Miramax is no longer interested in investing. Maguire and DiCaprio's "campaign" against the movie makes "potential buyers, distributors and others afraid to offend DiCaprio," say court papers.
Leo and the Ladies
"The pussy posse" didn't get its name for nothing. "When you're my age," DiCaprio says in The Leonardo DiCaprio Album, " your hormones are just kicking in and there's not much besides sex on your mind."

The gossip mill has produced a Cannonball Run of beauties supposedly "linked" to Leo: Alicia Silverstone, Juliette Lewis, Kate Moss, Kate Winslet (who said, "To me he's just smelly, farty Leo"), Demi Moore (Bruce was in Delaware shooting a movie), Claire Danes (who called him "immature"), Bridget Hall (who told me, "Nothing happened," refuting the Globe, which quoted her as saying, "He was lousy in bed. The sex was bad"), Sharon Stone (Leo said, of their screen kiss, "I was expecting a little more from ol' Sharon, y'know? Actually, she hurt my lip").

And yet DiCaprio still can't seem to shake the rumor he's less than interested in the company of women. "If I want to go to a party with a few male friends, it doesn't mean I'm gay!" Leo has said. Totally, dude. After all, Sinatra hung out with Don Rickles, but that doesn't mean he was having sex with him, either. "Leo is not gay," laughs still another young L.A. actor who has hung out with his crew. "Leo's all about girls."

But no wonder if Leo's had it with all the young ladies trying to get their names in bold print next to his. Take the case of Vanessa Haydon, the 20-year-old blonde Wilhelmina model and New York native who caused a mini-sensation after she was seen nuzzling Leo at that premiere party at Moomba for James Toback's Two Girls and a Guy, in May.

Star, May 26 (breathless): "Leonardo DiCaprio has fallen hard for a stunning young model - and pals say this time it's love. The superstar is so smitten with blonde beauty Vanessa Haydon that he's now a one-woman man."

"He never dated her," Cindy Guagenti says flatly. At least one person saw DiCaprio walk out of an after-party for a Tony Shafrazi Gallery opening at BondSt. just as Haydon was striking up a conversation with a gossip columnist about how happy Leo was to finally be with someone as "down to earth" as she.

"Vanessa played the media really well," says a young man who has known Haydon since they were going to "teenyboppers" (or teen nightclub events) together. "Now she's all dolled up and ladylike and shit, but she used to be this hard-rock in leather and baggy jeans. She was a total gangster bitch."

"She was an ill thug," says a girl who attended the Dwight School with Haydon. "She went out with this Latin King for like three years."

In her yearbook, Haydon was voted Most Likely to Wind Up on Ricki Lake. Instead, she made it into "Page Six," which reported in May that her handlers were charging Sydney newspapers $15,000 for advance publicity stills while Haydon was Down Under shooting the cover of Australian Harper's Bazaar. "Vanessa Haydon got game," says another former schoolmate.

But no matter. Leo's supposedly on to an 18-year-old Russian modelette from Moscow, Alyssa Sourovova; or at least he was for a night - again, at Moomba. Later that same week, however, he was with David Blaine at Ten's, the strip club on West 21st Street. I just missed them, but a dancer whispered hotly in my ear: "He comes in here with all his friends and sits back like the Mack Daddy - he doesn't even tip!"

At Life, where I also did not find Leo, I talked to a drag queen named Meeka who looked exactly like Naomi Campbell (with whom Leo also reportedly had a dalliance this year). "He's cute! He's right now!" Meeka shouted thoughtfully above the theme to Titanic, which had been set to a pounding disco beat. "When all the 17-year-olds become 22-year-olds, he'll have faded, but right now, he's right now. "

"And that's," she added, "what it's all about."

One night when I got home after looking for Leo, there was a message on my answering machine. A group of young guys - they all sounded drunk - were laughing and cutting up in the background. It was kind of strange. The speaker was telling me that if I wanted an interview with him, I'd have to "make a deal" along the lines of doing something for him that Monica did for Bill. "Then maybe we'll talk!" he laughed.

I'd been trying to get in touch with Leo.

But nah, I thought; it couldn't be Leo.
Leo and the Law
It was the kind of night the posse should love: It was all about them - or, that is, Leo. The premiere of The Man in the Iron Mask was showing at the Ziegfeld Theater; Leo entered to the tearful wailing and undergarment-pelting of hundreds of teenage girls. The after-party at the New York Public Library was attended by everyone who was anyone - but even most of them couldn't get upstairs into the extra-exclusive chamber where Leo and some of his entourage, which included Jay Ferguson and David Blaine that night, puffed on imported cigars. They'd just been down to Cuba.

Elizabeth Berkley made it into the upstairs party on the invitation of an L.A. publicist named Karen Tenzer, a partner in the firm Michaels, Wolf and Tenzer, which counts among its clients Gabriel Byrne, who co-starred in Iron Mask as Leo's Musketeer. Not long after Berkley, best known for her flashy role in Showgirls, started mingling, Tenzer took her aside. "She said, 'Jay Ferguson and Leo are going crazy for you, and they want you to come to Elaine's after this - without Roger,'" says Berkley, whose hapless boyfriend, actor-director-whatever Roger Wilson (he starred in Porky's I and II), was nearby, getting some food.

Berkley asked, was this some kind of joke? Tenzer, she says, knew she lived with Wilson here in New York; the couple had recently had dinner with Tenzer and Byrne while in Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. "'They're going nuts for you,'" Berkley says Tenzer laughed.

Berkley had also seen DiCaprio and Ferguson around for years. When DiCaprio was on Growing Pains and Ferguson on Evening Shade, Berkley was a Saved by the Bell cutie. "The last time I saw Jay, I was probably 17," says Berkley. "In L.A., you just see everybody around at events and auditions." However, she declined what seemed a rather odd request. Berkley says, "I told Karen I'm in love with Roger."

But that, apparently, wasn't the end of it. "The next morning on my voice mail," says Berkley, "there was a message from Jay, saying, 'Hey, baby, Karen gave me your number, we're going to dinner later, we want you to come.'" Throughout the day, Berkley says, she also received around seven messages from Tenzer, which she ignored, until finally, around midnight, there was one from Tenzer's assistant saying "Karen needs you immediately," giving Tenzer's cell-phone number, which she dialed.

"The first thing Karen said was, 'Why didn't you call Jay back?'" says Berkley, with quiet outrage. "She said, 'Your presence is requested here.' Her tone was very impatient. And I said, 'What, are you trying to deliver me to these guys, Karen?' And she said, 'Well, you know.'"

"Really upset," Berkley went to Wilson, who was in their living room watching sports. Hearing what had gone on, Wilson (who's from Brooklyn) asked for Tenzer's cell number and got Jay Ferguson on the phone. "I said, 'Look, Jay,'" says Wilson, "'I know you guys are having a great time and the town is your apple - but not this part of town. I don't know how this got started, but I'm just asking you please not to call my home again, and Elizabeth has asked please that you not call her again... . Okay?'"

"And then I heard a lot of profanity," says Berkley.

"There was a two-second pause," Wilson says, "and then it's, 'Fuck you, you fuckin' faggot, fuckin' motherfucker, we'll call whoever we want and if you don't fuckin' like it, why don't you come down here and tell us to our face?'"

"Thus," Wilson says with a sigh, "I put on my shoes and went to the Morgans hotel," where Leo and friends were dining at the restaurant Asia de Cuba.

The back table was full: DiCaprio was there (he had nine rooms booked at the hotel), as were Ferguson, Tenzer, Julia Ormond, Byrne, and about eight other posse members (no David Blaine that night). At the appearance of Wilson, the table fell silent. Wilson demanded of Tenzer why she was calling Berkley so late. "And then Jay Ferguson jumps up and says, 'I'm the one who called you, fuckface, and it's time for you and me to go outside,' " says Wilson. (Ferguson did not return phone calls from New York.)

Wilson went. Ferguson went. And then, according to a sworn statement reportedly given to police by the restaurant's chief of security (who, three weeks later, was no longer employed there), DiCaprio said to the others at the table: "Let's go kick his ass." And the rest of the table, minus Byrne and Ormond, followed.

Wilson claims two hotel security guards stood on either side of DiCaprio, who was smoking a cigarette, as he and Ferguson squared off on the sidewalk outside the entrance. "I'm facing Jay Ferguson, two feet in front of me," says Wilson. "The other guys are yelling at me, 'Fuck you, faggot! Go home, you fuckin' wimp, you're pathetic.' You know, all this."

Tenzer was also outside, according to Wilson, attempting to make peace; she held up her cell phone, saying, "I think this is all my fault. I can explain." Just then, as Wilson was momentarily distracted, someone - not Ferguson - punched him in the Adam's apple. He doubled over. And suddenly, the posse "went crazy, saying, 'Oh, no, oh, no, this can't happen!' And they jumped on the guy and threw him back in the hotel. They were protecting him," says Wilson. "And I never saw the kid again."

Wilson's larynx was damaged. His attacker still hasn't been identified. For now, the D.A.'s office isn't talking about the case, but Roger Wilson "was definitely assaulted," says Detective George Wich of the 6th Precinct, who's heading the investigation. "We're taking it seriously."

Karen Tenzer, contacted at her office in L.A., denied any involvement in the curious scenario. "I was just having dinner," she said. "Leonardo DiCaprio is not my client." "I can't answer whether any of Leo's friends called Elizabeth," Cindy Guagenti told me; elsewhere, Guagenti has said, "Leo's friend did call Elizabeth, but it was to invite her to dinner with them."

"That girl" - meaning Berkley - one of Leo's friends says lightly, "would have come in a second if we'd wanted her to. Any girl would."

Faux Leo

W as there something about being Leo that attracted trouble? Do these sorts of things just happen to you if you're the most sought-after young man in the world?

I was at Ñ on Crosby Street, not looking for Leo, when I thought I saw him. I jumped out of my chair. "That guy doesn't look like Leo," said my friend Greg, pushing me down. "Maybe Leonardo Smith."

It turned out the young man's name was Troy Allen, and he was a recruit from Detroit for a large brokerage firm. He was the same age and height as Leo, had the same paleness, the same loose-limbed, lanky look. The fires of Leomania licked at my brain. "How'd you like to be Leo for a night?" I asked him.

"Well, sure!" he said.

My worst fear for this experiment was that nothing would happen, and I'd have wasted everyone's time on a harebrained scheme. Quite the opposite occurred, which turned out to be much scarier.

I brought along a photographer (Catherine McGann) and a bodyguard (a large fellow who goes by "Brick"), and I rented a limo, white stretch, from the Yellow Pages. It was all at the last minute, and the car was not exactly prime; it looked like the limo of losers.

The driver, Raymond, had a long shiny ponytail under his shiny black cap and a Pancho Villa mustache. He was told we were picking up "Leo," to which he stammered, "Oh! I will drive very carefully!"

It was a Friday night. We picked "Leo" up around ten. I'd told him to wear sunglasses. "Welcome to my limousine!" Raymond said nervously, throwing open the back door.

"Gee, thanks!" Troy said.

Three of Troy's friends - Kara, Lee Ann, and Steve - came along for the ride. They were all in their early twenties, all in marketing and the financial sector, all quite giddy at being part of the stunt. Troy confessed he had never been in a limousine before.

"How does it feel to be so famous?" I asked him.

"It's awesome!" he said, fiddling with the power windows.

He was taking to his role with alacrity. "What's Kate Moss like?" I probed.

"She's gorgeous," said Troy. "And she's a really nice person."

Our first stop was the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. There was a small crowd on the sidewalk surrounding a woman holding a large Gila monster on her shoulder - you could touch it for a fee. When the limo pulled up, Catherine jumped out, snapping pictures of "Leo" emerging; the onlookers rushed over, leaving the Gila monster in the dust.

"Who's that?" they demanded. "Out the way!" ordered Brick.

Some of them zoomed after us into the store, where "Leo" pretended to shop for CDs; it was a bit difficult for him to concentrate, however, as a gaggle of teenage girls and so-excited-they-could-burst tourists were shamelessly scrutinizing his every move. Security guards were suddenly appearing, hissing at one another on walkie-talkies. "Gosh," Troy whispered, growing paler, "they really think I'm him! Let's get outta here!"

Back outside, as we moved down the street, the number of fans trailing us had tripled; some were running around in front of "Leo" taking pictures of him with disposable cameras and then dashing away, as if they had gotten away with something. Brick pretended to order back the limo driver on a cell phone. "Where's the limo at?" he barked. "We can't leave Leo out here on the street!"

While Raymond was circling the block - perhaps nervous about his precious cargo - he had gotten into an accident; a tow truck had hit the limousine. We were now driving "Leo" around in a dented limo. "Once you go down with the Titanic, " "Leo" said magnanimously, "you can deal with just about anything."

But "Leo" was getting antsy; he decided he had to have something to eat. "I'm hungry!" he moaned, at which we all jumped, making suggestions. After all, he was the star. "I wanna go to Planet Hollywood!" he said.

Troy was not aware of it, but the real Leo has been talking to the owners of the wildly popular snack joint (Schwarzenegger, Bruce and Demi, et al.) about becoming a shareholder. I didn't think this would be a problem; in fact, I thought it might be a good cover for why "Leo" would have nothing better to do on a Friday night than go check out the movie-star tchotchkes at Planet Hollywood. I called ahead: "We're coming with Leo," I said.

"Oh, okay!" said the maître d', Kathy, her voice taking on a solicitous tone. Would Leo be comfortable in the main dining room - or would he like them to set up the function room? "Leo" said to tell her he wanted to eat with everybody else, just like "regular people. Just because I'm a star, I don't think I'm better than anybody," Troy said sincerely.

Outside Planet Hollywood, a wait staff of about seven was waiting for us on the sidewalk. "They look like they should be holding up swords," Lee Ann observed. We all peered out the windows timorously. "Uh, this looks serious," Troy said.

Raymond flung opened the door. "Come on, Leo!" Brick boomed. Catherine started snapping pictures. "Leo" climbed out, baseball hat pulled down low.

They'd arranged for us to enter through a side door. Maître d' Kathy and Brett, the night manager, were following along behind us, peppering me with questions about Leo's visit. "Well, frankly, I was surprised he wanted to eat at Planet Hollywood," I said fishily. "Well, frankly, so were we," Kathy said.

As soon as we were in the main dining room - packed with patrons devouring mounds of fried food - heads began swiveling around; people were talking through their hands, mouthing "Lee-Oh," eyes wide, mouths full. Waiters from all over the restaurant were rushing into the room to get a look. "They on him," whispered Brick.

It all felt very dicey. I began to panic. "What do we do?"

"Talk to me. I'm the star!" hissed "Leo."

We sat down. I pretended to conduct an interview. "Uh, so you're thinking about becoming a shareholder of Planet Hollywood?" I asked.

"I don't want to disclose anything right now," muttered "Leo," sinking down behind his menu.

We had sent Kara and Lee Ann to the front to take the temperature (where, little did we know, Leo's tuxedo from Titanic is hanging in a large glass case; apparently, his legs are several inches shorter than Troy's). Later on, they told us that just then, a waiter passed by them announcing: "You girls are gonna pass out in a few seconds - I'm gonna pass out, too!"

On our side, the room had become strangely loud and animated, everyone showing off the way people do when they feel they're in the presence of someone known. "They on him," Brick said again, in disbelief.

"Can I get a picture?" said a portly woman who had appeared beside our table, flashing us with a disposable camera before we could answer.

A sweet-sixteen birthday party was already in progress. Long Island girls in short, sleeveless dresses and chunky heels were whipping out cell phones, mouthing "Lee-Oh!" excitedly into receivers.

Two 12-year-old girls in jeans came right up to us, arms crossed, faces drenched with disgust. "That's not Leo!" one said, turning on her heel.

But others weren't sure; a line of maidens was now circling the room like little Nerf sharks, in Gap shirts.

Brett was back. "Can you come with me?" he asked, in a high, pinched voice. Uh-oh, I thought; I telegraphed alarm to my tablemates, but they were transfixed by the weird swelling of the room. "Don't let them tear my hair out or anything," Troy was imploring Brick.

Brett and Kathy led me to an empty back office, where I expected to be dipped in batter and fried.

Instead, I was handed a telephone. Patty Caruso, the publicist of Planet Hollywood, had been called on Long Island (it was midnight). "How long is he going to be there?" she asked urgently. "Because I know Keith Barish" - the principal owner of Planet Hollywood - "will want to come down and meet with him. Would that be all right? He could be there in fifteen minutes - "

"Uh, I'll have to ask," I said, handing back the phone.

"We have to go," I told our party through clenched teeth.

Things were getting out of control. We got up. Brick had to wave people out of the way. "Leo just wanted to come down here and have a few drinks, get something to eat," he was shouting, "and look what y'all did! Y'all fucked up! We outta here! Come on, Leo, let's go!"

"Just let him know Eric took care of him," the waiter informed me politely.

We ran out to the limo. People were running after us, smashing their faces against the windows after "Leo" climbed in. "It's her 16th birthday; can't we get a picture?" People were taking pictures - of the car.

Back inside the car, Troy said, bewildered, "I'm a superstar. I can't believe what they did to me."

We took off into the night. The limo phone rang. Brick informed "Leo" that Raymond wanted his autograph.

Troy took off his sunglasses; he looked dazed. "Being in that situation is really stressful," he said unhappily. "I don't like being Leo anymore."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The hottest young actor in America and his rowdy friends have made nighttime New York their playground, creating havoc and leaving in their wake a trail of awestruck fans (and often, no tip).

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He defends himself against the portrayal of his crazy, out-of-control teenager in the news. One would expect to see such a crazy image, the image of the fallen hero is more appealing to insure. He hisses to, "You're no better than me!" You're just like us!"

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FRESH BLOOD; LEONARDO DiCAPRIO (Published 1995)

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The Baby-Faced Kid Has Developed Quite a Stare （2006）

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The Baby-Faced Kid Has Developed Quite a Stare （2006）

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Leonardo DiCaprio has smartly parlayed success into the kind of career few actors can get away with in the age of relentless gossip.

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Huge changes in appearance and personality

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Huge changes in appearance and personality

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DiCaprio plays a standard blond child with no depth in low-budget horror movies. DiCaprio didn't like this star image and thought it was the worst movie he had ever played, and hoped to avoid such roles in the future.

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UP AND COMING: Leonardo DiCaprio; The Actor Is Boyishly Handsome, and That's a Liability

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UP AND COMING: Leonardo DiCaprio; The Actor Is Boyishly Handsome, and That's a Liability

# data[].attributes.body
DiCaprio felt that the character he played in Critters 3 was a generic blond kid with no depth.

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UP AND COMING: Leonardo DiCaprio; The Actor Is Boyishly Handsome, and That’s a Liability (Published 1993)

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Movies|UP AND COMING: Leonardo DiCaprio; The Actor Is Boyishly Handsome, and That’s a Liability

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Toby in Boys was DiCaprio's first film role to gain recognition. Although he still plays a troubled teenager, he tries to change that image in the plot.

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In the comedy What's Eating Gilbert Grape, he brilliantly portrayed a younger brother with a developmental disability. Through his research, he created a vivid and amazing performance that brought out the behavior of children with disabilities. This was the first glimpse of his excellent acting skills.

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What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) ⭐ 7.7 | Drama

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5 Leonardo DiCaprio: King of the “World”           From the book Pretty People (academic)

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5 Leonardo DiCaprio: King of the “World”           From the book Pretty People (academic)

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This chapter of the book details DiCaprio's changing star image and the process of its formation, from the beginning of his career to the Titanic, from beautiful, talented teenager to popular movie star of romantic fantasy, by analyzing the films in which he acted.

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5 Leonardo DiCaprio: King of the “World”

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5 Leonardo DiCaprio: King of the “World” was published in Pretty People on page 103.

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In an attempt to break through the controversy over the physical attractiveness of his blonde actor image, he hoped to show off his acting talent with the erotic drama Total Eclipse, but with limited success.

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Leonardo DiCaprio: his career in pictures

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Leonardo DiCaprio: his career in pictures

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Using photos from the film to summarize the transformation process of DiCaprio’s image

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Leonardo DiCaprio: his career in pictures

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From teen heartthrob to Hollywood hero to burgeoning producer, these are Leo's finest moments

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Reports suggested that DiCaprio's delicate angelic face was not enough to play a hormonal male character, and the star image of the groomed good boy actor in Titanic still remained by playing himself.

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DiCaprio's performance in "On the Beach" wasn't great, and the role he played still left him bogged down by a lack of quality and character. And the film's devastation of Thailand's environment spurred his work on environmental improvement.

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The desire to find something real -- to connect with something or someone -- is what drives Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young American backpacker who arrives in Thailand with adventure on his mind. Etienne (Guillaume Canet) and Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen) join him on an adventure to

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Greening Hollywood – The Activism of Leonardo DiCaprio （László Erdős） (academic)

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Greening Hollywood – The Activism of Leonardo DiCaprio （László Erdős） (academic)

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A section in this scholarly book details Leonardo DiCaprio's contributions to the environment, nature, and animal conservation.

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Celebrity involvement in good causes is flourishing in Hollywood. But few of the stars are as dedicated as Leonardo DiCaprio is to nature conservation, animal advocacy, and environmental protection. He set up the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which supports various environmental and conservation projects. One of the key areas where the Foundation is most active is the protection of indigenous peoples' rights. DiCaprio produced, co-wrote and narrated 'The 11 th Hour,' an excellent documentary that featured interviews with leading scientists about the environmental crisis. More recent environmental films related to DiCaprio are 'Before the Flood' and 'Ice on Fire.' Also, DiCaprio contributed to a series of short documentaries highlighting various environmental and conservation topics. Leonardo DiCaprio serves as United Nations Messenger of Peace on Climate Change.

Keywords

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Greening Hollywood - The Activism of Leonardo DiCaprio

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Celebrity involvement in good causes is flourishing in Hollywood. But few of the stars are as dedicated as Leonardo DiCaprio is to nature conservation, animal advocacy, and environmental protection. He set up the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which supports various...

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The image of the blond boy who plays himself in the role

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The image of the blond boy who plays himself in the role

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DiCaprio collaborated with Nolan on Inception, which was a huge success and became his second highest-grossing film. And the film won many Oscar honors. Although this film is not a film that highlights his personal performance and star image, the combination of wonderful story and acting skills has accumulated a reputation for him.

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Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.

In January of...

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List of Directors Leonardo DiCaprio has worked with since Titanic - IMDb

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List of Directors Leonardo DiCaprio has worked with since Titanic

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DiCaprio plays a fur hunter who encounters many difficulties but overcomes them one by one, even eating his internal organs alive. The movie successfully demonstrated his outstanding acting skills and successfully created his star image as a dedicated and professional Hollywood actor.

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The Revenant (2015) ⭐ 8.0 | Action, Adventure, Drama

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After multiple nominations without success, DiCaprio finally won an Oscar for The Revenant, a completely different image of DiCaprio in a bearskin and an ugly beard than a philanderer, finally helping him break through years of barriers in front of the camera.

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The Internet is going to need to create a new Leonardo DiCaprio meme. Because on Sunday, after 27 years in Hollywood, six nominations, one digested bison liver, countless interviews about said bison liver, and one graphic bear attack, the actor has finally won the best actor Oscar, for his performance in The Revenant.

"Thank you to all of you in this room," DiCaprio said, to a standing ovation, when he reached the stage. The actor thanked his "brother" in the endeavor, The Revenant co-star Tom Hardy, as well as director Alejandro González Iñárritu and frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, for teaching him the art of film. To his parents, who were in the audience watching, he added, "None of this would be possible without you." A tireless environmental activist, DiCaprio also used his stage time to point out that 2015 was the hottest year in history and noted, "Climate change is real. We need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. . .For our children's children. . . Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take this night for granted."

His work, as a 19th-century frontiersman who must overcome devastating obstacles to survival, earned him a clean sweep of the major acting awards in the lead-up to the Oscars-including a Golden Globe, a SAG Award, and a BAFTA. To make the film, DiCaprio and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu had to overcome their own fair share of real-life obstacles, including temperatures so cold that cameras froze during the making of the film, which was shot entirely in natural light, and a worldwide search for snow.

DiCaprio has said of the arduous process, "I think we all knew what we were signing up for. I had seen this script floating around the industry for some while, but logistically it was so hard to execute. And it took a very particular filmmaker. I felt it was going to be like going down the heart of darkness together. And so much of our experience, so many of the things that happened to us while we were there immersing ourselves in the wilderness like this, I think translated into the narrative of the story."

Earlier this month, contributor James S. Murphy theorized how DiCaprio was able to finally overcome the "slap the stud" Oscar curse, which has kept other handsome leading men like Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp from being celebrated by the Academy for their acting, with his role in The Revenant:

In little time, however, his character is subjected to a series of humiliations, from being mauled by a bear to eating a dead bison that had already been half-devoured by wolves. This is not Leo the playboy who dates models in real life, but DiCaprio in an ugly beard and bearskin playing a dad and a widow, haunted by dreams of his dead wife, which we get to watch.

The film breaks down the barrier of cool that DiCaprio has assembled over the years, on-camera and off. Bedraggled and bereft, Glass becomes the object of our empathy and the guiding consciousness of The Revenant. He's not cool, and based on the film's surprising box-office success, audiences are glad for it.

Making the win even sweeter was the fact that DiCaprio's dear friend and Titanic co-star Kate Winslet was on hand as a fellow nominee to help celebrate the moment (in just the latest red-carpet reunion between Jack and Rose). Winslet has said, "I feel very strongly that it may possibly be Leo's year. [H]e is my closest friend in the world and I just couldn't imagine not being there to support him."

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Leonardo DiCaprio Finally Wins His Oscar

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As expected, The Revenant star won the Academy Award on Sunday night.

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DiCaprio was excited to work in silence (academic)

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DiCaprio was excited to work in silence (academic)

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His speechless performance in The Revenant, overcoming immense suffering shows him as a dedicated and resilient Hollywood actor.

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Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change (academic)

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Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change (academic)

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159885

From this scholarly article it can be concluded that DiCaprio's speech on climate change in his Oscar acceptance speech did inspire global climate change concerns, utilizing his celebrity image and influence to raise awareness about the environment.

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Eric C. Leas,

Benjamin M. Althouse,

Mark Dredze,

Nick Obradovich,

James H. Fowler,

Seth M. Noar,

Jon-Patrick Allem,

John W. Ayers

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Abstract

The strategies that experts have used to share information about social causes have historically been top-down, meaning the most influential messages are believed to come from planned events and campaigns. However, more people are independently engaging with social causes today than ever before, in part because online platforms allow them to instantaneously seek, create, and share information. In some cases this "organic advocacy" may rival or even eclipse top-down strategies. Big data analytics make it possible to rapidly detect public engagement with social causes by analyzing the same platforms from which organic advocacy spreads. To demonstrate this claim we evaluated how Leonardo DiCaprio's 2016 Oscar acceptance speech citing climate change motivated global English language news (Bloomberg Terminal news archives), social media (Twitter postings) and information seeking (Google searches) about climate change. Despite an insignificant increase in traditional news coverage (54%; 95%CI: -144 to 247), tweets including the terms "climate change" or "global warming" reached record highs, increasing 636% (95%CI: 573-699) with more than 250,000 tweets the day DiCaprio spoke. In practical terms the "DiCaprio effect" surpassed the daily average effect of the 2015 Conference of the Parties (COP) and the Earth Day effect by a factor of 3.2 and 5.3, respectively. At the same time, Google searches for "climate change" or "global warming" increased 261% (95%CI, 186-335) and 210% (95%CI 149-272) the day DiCaprio spoke and remained higher for 4 more days, representing 104,190 and 216,490 searches. This increase was 3.8 and 4.3 times larger than the increases observed during COP's daily average or on Earth Day. Searches were closely linked to content from Dicaprio's speech (e.g., "hottest year"), as unmentioned content did not have search increases (e.g., "electric car"). Because these data are freely available in real time our analytical strategy provides substantial lead time for experts to detect and participate in organic advocacy while an issue is salient. Our study demonstrates new opportunities to detect and aid agents of change and advances our understanding of communication in the 21st century media landscape.

Citation: Leas EC, Althouse BM, Dredze M, Obradovich N, Fowler JH, Noar SM, et al. (2016) Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0159885. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159885

Editor: Donald R. Olson, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, UNITED STATES

Received: May 5, 2016; Accepted: July 6, 2016; Published: August 2, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Leas et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All data are publicly available. News coverage data can be accessed using the Bloomberg Terminal {NT GO} function ( bloomberg.com/professional), Twitter postings can be accessed using the public API ( dev.twitter.com/streaming/overview), and Google searches can be downloaded from Google Trends ( google.com/trends). Please contact the corresponding author if further assistance is required.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Bloomberg LP provided support in the form of salaries for authors [MD], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: Mark Dredze is commercially employed by Bloomberg LP. There are no other relevant competing interests. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Introduction

On February 28 th, 2016 Leonardo DiCaprio used his Oscar acceptance speech to advocate for action on climate change to 34.5 million live viewers (Box 1) [ 1]. DiCaprio is not alone in championing social causes, especially climate change advocacy [ 2, 3]. Recent trends suggest that a large number of non-celebrities are also conscious of social and environmental causes, with 81% of global consumers claiming they would be willing to purchase/consume fewer products to preserve natural resources [ 4]. Moreover, the Web 2.0 era has democratized advocacy. Unlike ever before, the public can seek, create, and share information instantaneously online [ 5]. We call this phenomenon "organic advocacy" since it is often led by the public and occurs outside the context of expert-led events or campaigns.

Box 1

"And lastly, I just want to say this, making The Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world-the world that we collectively felt in 2015 [w]as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production had to move to the southernmost tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous peoples of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this, for our children's children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed." ~ Transcript from Leonardo Dicaprio's Oscar Acceptance Speech

Population-level engagement with a campaign or organized event is typically assessed using surveys, but surveys are ill equipped to study discrete occurrences of organic advocacy, such as DiCaprio's speech. Surveys are costly and typically do not have sampling frames that allow for the necessary baseline measures to demonstrate deviations from historical trends. These barriers alone may explain why organic advocacy has not been well-studied or integrated into expert communication strategies. Significant breakthroughs in big data are eliminating some of these barriers. Online footprints continuously shadow how the public engages with and seeks information [ 6, 7], including with environmental issues and climate change [ 8, 9]. By harnessing these novel data streams, we can directly observe how the public engaged with DiCaprio's call-to-action. And because these data are available in real time, our strategy can be taken to the field to inform how experts respond to advocacy as it is happening. Specifically, we explored how DiCaprio's message resonated on (a) traditional news and social media, and (b) how the public concurrently sought information on how to respond online. We also compared DiCaprio's speech to other organized climate change events, such as Earth Day, to contrast the potential impacts of organic advocacy to planned advocacy.

Materials and Methods

Evaluating changes in traditional news and social media relied on daily trends for global news articles from the Bloomberg Terminal using the {NT GO} function ( bloomberg.com/professional) and postings on Twitter ( dev.twitter.com/streaming/overview) that included the phrases "climate change" or "global warming" from January 1, 2011 through March 9, 2016. News was plotted on a relative scale (the proportion of all news including the key terms) and Twitter on an absolute scale (all English language tweets including the key terms) since it was only available in this format.

To evaluate how the public sought information we monitored all English language Google searches ( google.com/trends), taking into account the specific topics the public sought information on, by hour for February 25, 2016 through March 9, 2016. Google searches were divided between those primarily investigating the claims made by DiCaprio, including the exact terms "climate change", "global warming," "hottest year," and "indigenous," versus those investigating topics that are related to climate change, but were not mentioned by DiCaprio, including the exact terms "solar power," "electric car," "sea level rise," and "carbon tax." Searches were plotted on a relative search volume (the proportion of searches including the key terms relative to all searches scaled to a 0 to 100 scale where 100 is the highest search proportion) and absolute volumes were estimated using Google Adwords ( google.com/adwords).

Our study design was quasi-experimental, deriving a single estimate of the "DiCaprio effect" by comparing observed news, Twitter, and search volumes around DiCaprio's speech to a counterfactual estimate representing expected news, Twitter, and search volumes had DiCaprio not advocated for climate change during the Oscars [ 10]. The observed volumes were derived from the time series. The counterfactual volumes were derived from an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, with components estimated using the algorithm developed by Hyndman and Khandakar [ 11]. This model used historical data to estimate expected volumes for the time period after DiCaprio's speech. These models are robust to the most well-known biases, including recurring periodicities and trending in the data, such as how the daily volume of tweets may be growing as Twitter's user base grows. The ratio of observed and counterfactual volumes were calculated so as to represent the "effect" as a percent increase with confidence bounds (alpha = 0.05) estimated by using 10,000 random draws from the multivariate normal sampling distribution with mean equal to the maximum-likelihood point estimates, and variance equal to the variance-covariance matrix [ 12]. We fitted additional models to describe the durability of the "DiCaprio effect" and describe variations by hour or day.

To provide a practical comparison, we also studied the most recent United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP), an international brokerage of a global climate change agreement, and the 45 th Earth Day celebration. This analysis relied on the same data trends and analytic approaches used to study the DiCaprio effect. In summary, each time trend was analyzed and the observed volumes were derived from each respective time series, including November 30, 2015 though December 12, 2015 for COP and April 22, 2015 for Earth Day, and the counterfactual volumes were derived from forecasts using the Hyndman and Khandakar method [ 11]. The ratios of observed and counterfactual volumes were used to compute the COP effect and Earth Day effect for each data type. Because the COP occurs over several days we computed the summary COP effect using the daily average for all days during COP. The resulting COP effect and Earth Day effect was then compared to the DiCaprio effect (e.g., Dicaprio effect divided by the summary COP effect) with statistical tests estimated by using 10,000 random draws from the multivariate normal sampling distribution with mean equal to the maximum-likelihood point estimates, and variance equal to the variance-covariance matrix [ 12].

All analyses relied on anonymized data and adhere to the terms and conditions, terms of use, and privacy policies of Bloomberg LP, Google, and Twitter. All analyses were computed using R Ver. 3.2.1

Results

Social media engagement on climate change spiked after DiCaprio's speech even though news coverage of climate change did not statistically significantly increase (54%; 95%CI: -144 to 247). Tweets mentioning climate change or global warming were 636% (95%CI: 573-699) higher than expected the day DiCaprio spoke (Fig 1).

Bar plots show estimated increases in daily volumes for news articles and Twitter postings the day of DiCaprio's Oscar speech, the daily average during the 2015 Conference of the Parties meeting, and 2015 Earth Day, comparing the observed volume to an empirical expectation of the counterfactual volume derived from forecasts using historical trends. Arrows indicate that the confidence interval bound continues off the plotted image.

To put these trends in perspective, the response to DiCaprio's speech on Twitter was 5.3 times larger (p = 0.003) than Earth Day (Earth Day = 117%; 95%CI: 35-202) and 3.2 times larger (p < 0.0001) than the daily average during the most recent COP (COP = 200%; 95%CI: 149-251). Moreover, the number of tweets including the phrases "climate change" or "global warming" on the day of DiCaprio's speech were at the highest recorded value in our database with more than 250,000 tweets on that day.

Increased engagement on social media co-occurred with increased information seeking for content from DiCaprio's speech (Fig 2). Google searches for "climate change" increased immediately the hour DiCaprio spoke, rising 261% (95%CI: 186-335) the day of, 78% (95%CI: 51-105) the day after, and remained significantly higher 4 days later (39%; 95%CI: 17-61); accounting for 104,190 total searches. "Global warming" searches were 210% (95%CI: 149-272) higher the day of and still 42% (95%CI: 19-65) higher 4 days later, representing 216,490 total searches. In relative terms, the day DiCaprio spoke these searches were 3.8 (p = 0.004) and 4.3 (p = 0.005) times higher than the daily average during the most recent COP and Earth Day, respectively. At their peak these searches reached the third-highest point ever recorded for climate change or global warming on Google trends.

Time trends show Google search volumes for the referenced focal terms, clustered according to those included (versus not included) in DiCaprio's speech. Bar plots show estimated increases in each focal term, with estimates showing the day of DiCaprio's speech (0) and subsequent days labeled as 1 through 5. Estimates were derived by comparing the observed volume to an empirical expectation of the counterfactual volume derived from forecasts using historical trends.

In addition, DiCaprio claimed that 2015 was the hottest year on record and indigenous populations will be disproportionately affected by climate change. Google queries including the terms "hottest year" or "indigenous" spiked immediately yielding 342% (95%CI: 248-433) and 81% (95%CI: 53-109) more searches than expected the first day following the speech, and remained elevated for 2 and 3 more days, respectively. During the same period, queries for climate change topics not mentioned by DiCaprio, such as "electric cars," did not deviate from their historical trends.

Discussion

DiCaprio's speech was a major moment for climate change advocacy, inspiring record levels of social media engagement and near record levels of online information seeking for climate change, apart from any similar increase in traditional news coverage.

Alongside DiCaprio there are several newly discovered cases showing that organic advocacy-emanating from celebrities and ordinary citizens-have a reach that is greater than virtually any planned media campaign. The most significant smoking-cessation-promoting event in Brazil was when Brazilian President Lula disclosed his laryngeal cancer diagnosis which he attributed to smoking [ 13]. Angelina Jolie's editorial in The New York Times disclosing her prophylactic double mastectomy corresponded with record levels of news and Google searches for breast cancer, increases that presaged amplified breast cancer screening and prevention [ 14, 15]. Catherine Zeta-Jones disclosed she was treated for bipolar disorder and public engagement with and help-seeking for the condition spiked near record levels [ 16]. When Charlie Sheen first disclosed his HIV-positive status he personally did not promote HIV prevention, but the public engaged with HIV prevention in record numbers [ 17]. Ordinary citizen Tawny Willoughby's Facebook pictures of her skin cancer lesions, attributable to indoor tanning, were shared more than 50,000 times and widely covered by news media [ 18]. These instances beg the question of how experts might embrace organic advocacy to further their social causes.

Traditional top-down communication strategies-i.e., experts and organizations communicating with the public through planned events and campaigns-have predominated as the method for disseminating scientific evidence and promoting behavior change [ 19]. These top-down frameworks typically expect that messages are more impactful when shared in the context of a planned campaign [ 20] and, in some cases, it is almost accepted that scientific evidence is only available and reliably disseminated "from the top." For instance, many notable reviews, including for climate change communication strategies, do not consider the possibility of information retrieval and sharing outside of the context of a planned campaign [ 21- 23]. However, the example of DiCaprio and others demonstrates that dissemination can occur completely outside the context of a campaign and can even generate more public engagement than planned events. Moreover, in some cases, the scientific community is beginning to find that retaliatory messages from bottom-up communication channels (e.g., on Twitter) can eclipse, dilute, or reduce the efficacy of planned messages [ 24]. Top-down frameworks are useful but communication strategies should be adapted to include a greater emphasis on bottom-up approaches where experts dedicate more resources to listening, dialoguing, and empowering the public who themselves can become advocates for change.

The use of big media data to inform real time decision-making is an increasingly common phenomenon throughout the sciences [ 25- 28]. To harness the power of big data in the context of scientific communication, developing the infrastructure to detect organic advocacy events virtually in real time should be a priority. As an analogy, the financial industry relies on sophisticated systems for real time decision-making, like the Bloomberg Terminal. These systems map population trends similar to those we outlined here but are available to thousands of users, alerting users automatically to critical deviations in trends, and allowing users to share intelligence with colleagues. It is time the scientific community invest in similar resources. All of the results described herein can be available in real time, including additional forms of passive surveillance and crowdsourced data to understand discrete media events and climate change generally [ 29- 33]. In the case of DiCaprio there was minimal engagement from the scientific community based on our review or related media, likely because experts were not aware of the magnitude of his speech or did not know how to build upon his call for action on climate change.

With awareness of events that can facilitate organic advocacy, the scientific community can engage the public by promoting existing resources and designing new messages targeting public discourse when public engagement and information seeking are high [ 34]. Given that searches were closely linked to the content of DiCaprio's speech, the importance of this task is underscored as experts could have filled content gaps and highlighted how the public can mitigate climate change. Reactions could be shared across a diverse array of bottom-up communication channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter at a very low cost and mirroring how the public is engaged.

By amending our communication frameworks, building infrastructure for monitoring, and reacting to organic advocacy in near real time, we open novel possibilities for communication advocacy and research. For instance, does traditional top-down media advocacy interact with or generate public engagement to discrete organic events? How does organic advocacy about misinformation resonate, such as climate change denial [ 35] or anti-vaccination [ 36]? Can events like DiCaprio's speech drive more than engagement by changing opinions and inspiring action in ways that are complementary to top-down communication approaches [ 37, 38]?

Climate change is a serious crisis with critical implications for public health [ 39, 40]. Climate change advocacy relies on imploring citizens to acknowledge the reality of a warming planet, accept humanity's role in the fate of the planet, and help to forge a consensus on concrete solutions to the problem [ 41, 42]. DiCaprio issued a wake up call to the public that ignoring climate change poses great peril. At the same time, we believe that ignoring organic advocacy and bottom-up communication approaches imperils the effectiveness of media advocacy and, ultimately, environmental and public health. The scientific community must adapt to the 21st century dynamic communication landscape and ready itself for the next opportunity to harness the agents of change.

Acknowledgments

We appreciate feedback from the Epidemiology Doctoral Seminar and the Human Nature Group at San Diego State University and University of California San Diego. All errors or omissions are our own.

Author Contributions

1. Conceived and designed the experiments: ECL JWA.

2. Analyzed the data: ECL BMA JWA.

3. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: ECL BMA MD NO JHF SMN JPA JWA.

4. Wrote the paper: ECL BMA MD NO JHF SMN JPA JWA.

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Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change

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The strategies that experts have used to share information about social causes have historically been top-down, meaning the most influential messages are believed to come from planned events and campaigns. However, more people are independently engaging with social causes today than ever before, in part because online platforms allow them to instantaneously seek, create, and share information.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/fint_00138_1

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Quentin Tarantino's Once upon a Time... in Hollywood offers a dazzling portrait of Los Angeles in the 1960s, in the tale of a fading actor and his stunt double in the days leading up to the Manson...

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'I Wanted Some Fucking Rinky-Dink Movie Career' : Quentin Tarantino, the director-as-DJ and stardom in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood | Semantic Scholar

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To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2019.1656537

It can be concluded through this scholarly article that DiCaprio's status as an environmentalist, a personal celebrity activist, has become an important part of his star image. It increases the credibility and recognition of the image.

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Shining in Shadows                                                          9. Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn: Acting Authentic (academic)

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Shining in Shadows                                                          9. Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn: Acting Authentic (academic)

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https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813552163-011

This chapter through the book describes the process and ways in which DiCaprio stripped away and rebelled against the pretty-boy image that had developed, and managed a private life with an on-screen persona.

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he forgotten history of Leonardo DiCaprio: How a dorky teen actor became a superstar (academic)

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DiCaprio's image of beauty and sexual fantasy is also the result of fan shaping