Official Leonardo DiCaprio Thread

Leonardo DiCaprio began his major film career with This Boy's Life (1993). For his audition of the film, he was supposed to respond to an inflammatory question delivered by Robert De Niro with a flat "yes". Instead, the skinny teenager shouted "yes!" and an astonished De Niro laughed in surprise. Needless to say, he got the role, and his performance received a large amount of critical acclaim. Robert De Niro, impressed with the young actor's intensity and devotion, gave his name to long-time collaborator Martin Scorsese as somebody to work with in the future.

DiCaprio continued taking challenging roles in independent and low-budget films, ranging from his angsty depiction of junkie Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries (1995) to his Oscar-nominated performance as the mentally challenged Arnie in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993). He played Shakespeare in Baz Luhrmann's frantic adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet" and a homosexual, sado-masochistic poet in the dark period piece Total Eclipse (1995).



Four years after his work on Grape, DiCaprio struck gold when he took the lead role in James Cameron's romantic period epic, Titanic. The film garnered eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Mr. DiCaprio was thrust into the ranks of America's leading players. He took a couple of flops (a cameo in Woody Allen's poorly received Celebrity and a major role in The Man in the Iron Mask), but the quality of his acting remained top notch. Two years after his poorly received efforts, he starred in Trainspotting director Danny Boyle's The Beach.

The picture was also poorly received, so Leo took two years to regain his status. In 2002, his resume peaked. He starred in Steven Spielberg's charming, critically acclaimed character piece Catch Me If You Can, and Martin Scorsese took De Niro's advice and cast him in his epic Gangs of New York.

Two years later, he collaborated with Scorsese again in the Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator. His performance was his most complex and demanding one yet. Filled with brilliant nuances and a rare degree of ferocity, his acting in the picture was arguably the best of the decade. He received his first Best Actor nomination, but lost to Jamie Foxx in Ray.

His third team-up with the legendary Scorsese was in the gangster drama The Departed (2006). Shedding the gentle image he has displayed in his more mainstream work, he shocked audiences with his portrait of this foul-mouthed, violent undercover cop. The film won Martin Scorsese his first Best Picture and Best Actor awards at the Oscars, and DiCaprio a Golden Globe nomination. His other performance that year, as a hardened South African mercenary in Blood Diamond, landed him his third Academy Award nomination.



Both him and Scorsese have shown all intentions of continuing to work with each other, and DiCaprio has films lined up with some of the best working American directors. He is the best actor we have, and I can only hope that he starts receiving the respect from audiences that he deserves.

When I first started on this site, I posted a thread for ranking DiCaprio's films and performances. He's my favorite actor of all time, and I'd like to dedicate a more complex thread to him. Discuss anything you want here - if you like him, if you hate him, who you want to see him work with, favorite roles, etc, etc. Here are my ratings of all of his films (listed in chronological order):

This Boy's Life (1993) ... 5/5


What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) ... 5/5


The Basketball Diaries (1995) ... 5/5


The Quick and the Dead (1995) ... 3/5


Total Eclipse (1995) ... 5/5


Marvin's Room (1996) ... 3.5/5


Romeo + Juliet (1996) ... 3.5/5


Titanic (1997) ... 5/5


The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) ... 2/5


The Beach (2000) ... 3.5/5


Don's Plum (2001) ... 5/5


Catch Me If You Can (2002) ... 5/5


Gangs of New York (2002) ... 5/5


The Aviator (2004) ... 5/5


Blood Diamond (2006) ... 4/5


The Departed (2006) ... 5/5

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Good read.

Thanks. Not a big fan yourself?

DiCaprio is one of the finest actors performing today. No one matches his intensity. His work is beyond reproach. In even his much decried films (Iron Mask, Titanic, The Beach) he performed admirably. As for myself, my favorite of his performances is Romeo & Juliet. Those who say his performance was effeminate simply have no understanding for the character of Romeo. Great thread shining light on a great career.

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Point to one end, which is always present." - T.S. Eliot

Very good choice. It's a pretty amazing performance, I must say. It's always nice to find more fans of him. What's your favorite film that he's in? (Different from favorite performance)

I am quite a fan actually, he is ranked pretty highly in my books.

I liked The Departed and he was great in Gibert Grape.

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I like Di Caprio, but i sometimes find the scenes in which he displays intensity to be a bit one dimensional. Other than that though, i think he is a brave young actor with a great deal of potential.

His best performance came in The Aviator (Scorsese, 2004) in my opinion. The complex character of Howard Hughes in this biopic must have been frustrating to portray, as the film shows him to be a very fickle and uncompromising figure. However, Di Caprio plays the role brilliantly. In a biopic there is not much room for error and Leo is pretty flawless. I espescially like Di Caprio's approach at the most dramatic stage of Hughes' OCD.

Thanks, Mike. Great stuff! I like Leo a whole helluva lot...

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Wow. It's great to see how open-minded people are here. For some reason, on IMDb nobody seems open to accepting the lead actor from Titanic (even though it's the highest-grossing film of all time, and his performance was arguably great). It's hard for me to say what his best performance is, but I liked his work on Don's Plum the most. That is such a unique and dark character, and he stole the attention from everybody else onscreen without mugging.

I just saw the only DiCaprio film I hadn't seen yet (Celebrity) and I think it's pretty underrated.


Celebrity - 1998, Woody Allen
In this film, DiCaprio played a parody of the image that had been built up around him immediately after Titanic. His flamboyant portrayal of the coke-sniffing, tantrum-throwing rich kid is hysterically funny and very convincing. Definitely a recommended film for all fans of Woody Allen and/or Leonardo DiCaprio.

Great thread Mikey, its nice to see your passion, I do like Leo, loved him Gilbert Grape

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He blew me away in The Departed. But then again, everyone in that cast was great......


Leo has a really strong fan following on mofo. You can't really go by wha tpeople on the imdb.com message board say, they are usually idiots.

True, very true.

Hear hear! lol. The top 250 is a joke now... it's really ridiculous. I think he's one celebrity who is worthy of a huge fan following, and it's taken him a long time to build up the respect he's always deserved as an actor.

Hey, i just want to reiterate what Michael said about "Celebrity." DiCaprio does an absolute fantastic job in the movie, even though his role is very small. I would actually recommend this movie specifically to people who aren't woody allen fans (or, rather, don't yet know it!!) because it has all of the woody charm, but none of the woody presence, since kenneth branagh is the one doing the woody impression throughout the film. even though it's not that good of a movie, dicaprio's part is wonderful, and even if it doesn't make you change your mind about woody, it's essential for any lover of leo. that is all.

Wise words sir, wise words. I personally found it a little irritating that Branagh decided to do a Woody Allen impersonation instead of coming up with an original performance. I think that would have been a lot better.

ok so ... i think i posted this somewhere else at random, but i think earlier this year (or maybe last year? i'm senile) it suddenly hit me that I was finally - shockingly - moved by dicaprio. i think it was more of an "oh my god he suddenly became hot to me, how'd that happen?" post, but it ties to this because ...

i think he was always a *very good* actor. not great. as an actor, a businessman, he was generally smart about picking very good scripts and roles to play. however, he was also *chosen* to fill a role, and, forgive the comparison, but it's like when a man hires a female escort and they meet for the first time and she's all glamorous and he asks her who she is and she says, enigmatically and coquettishly:

"Who do you want me to be?"

That was DiCaprio - right up until Gangs of New York. Now, somewhere around that time, he hit 30, right? I'm assuming, but bear with me ...

Even in that film, I felt he was pretty much doing the grown up, R rated version of Titanic, ie, what would have happened if he and Rose made it alive. Compare this also to "Far and Away" with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. DiCaprio is not required to do, as someone else mentioned, anything beyond a certain dimension.

He is becoming something, yes, very intense, yes, very alive and real - but it's not 110% real. It's 90% real. He's always holding a piece of himself back. Maybe there's nothing in there, and he's nothing but a vessel emitting the power of acting, or there is, and he's not completely, utterly, releasing to it.

I think the greatest actors "come into their own." that means as a full adult, warts and all, accepting and knowing what you are capable of, and being willing to share it all, unapologetically, without reservation, without a tiny drop of holding back, with your audience, with your cast, with your director. cate blanchett can do that. al pacino can do that. ralph fiennes can do that. morgan freeman can do that.

there was always a little bit of "boy" in DiCaprio, and it wasn't because he looked like one. It's cause he was always hiding a piece of his inner self away while he was letting all of the "character" out. I felt like he was separating them, not merging them, not really becoming all the way.

Until "The Aviator." I didn't even like the movie that much, i mean it's a biopic, and it was certainly fascinating to watch this be the man's life, but i didn't really care about the life details or the people in it, or the drama. but I WAS struck by a new realization.

somewhere in there, somewhere in between Gangs of New York and The Aviator, DiCaprio became a man. That sounds messed up, but i noticed it. his barks and growls were not just sounds now, they carried weight, i believed them.

by the time he got to The Departed, I was amazed. i said, something bit him in the ass, or he just flat out doesn't care what he exposes any more because he is giving it his all, full tilt, and NOW i admire him. NOW i want to watch him. NOW i really respect him.

i don't know what happened, but something happened. somewhere in there he left the doubt or the waffling or the hesitation of the 20s beyond, the malleable "open maybe" and walked into his 30s and woke up. he's all rough now. his presence on screen carries weight. his eyes aren't just pretty and showing some emotion, they actually deliver, point a to point b, right between your eyes.

it's an awesome transformation. i honestly had pretty much shrugged him off back there at gangs of new york. i said, he's that woman that walks into the room and asks others who they want her to be, and she becomes it. she needs it. she defines herself by the role and loses the original spark, the self, just gives it wholly to someone else's vision and need.

now, he's got something in his eyes and his walk that show he's not going to do that any more. he calls the shots, and that less than 100% he was giving finally broke the benchmark.

so yeah, I like him now. didn't as much before, he was like a B, but he's gotten way better and finally moved from "very good" into "great." he's an A now.

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That's a very interesting opinion. Thanks for so much elaboration.
But didn't you think DiCaprio "released to it" with What's Eating Gilbert Grape and The Basketball Diaries? To me, those were two of his most outstanding transformations.

Anyone seen the 11th hour yet? or have any opinions on Leo producing/hosting this year's environmental horror-doc?