Leonardo DiCaprio

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Leonardo DiCaprio

I'm the king of the world! Woo-hoo!

Leonardo DiCaprio (born 1974) is an American actor and film producer whose career rose with his role in the television sit-com Growing Pains. His critically acclaimed breakthrough film performance came in This Boy's Life, and was quickly followed by What's Eating Gilbert Grape. His performance as the mentally handicapped brother of Johnny Depp, in the title role, brought him nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He gained fame for his role as Jack Dawson in Titanic, and has starred in many other successful films including Romeo + Juliet, Catch Me If You Can, Blood Diamond (which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor), Inception, and The Revenant (which finally gave him the award).

DiCaprio received another Academy Award nomination came for his role as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorsese. He has also worked with Scorsese in films such as Gangs of New York, The Departed and Shutter Island. This partnership was compared to the earlier working relationship between Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

Tends to appear in a lot of Period Pieces (The Quick and the Dead, Total Eclipse, Titanic, The Man in the Iron Mask, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island, J. Edgar, the upcoming The Great Gatsby and Django Unchained) and to die in many of his movies: The Quick and the Dead, Total Eclipse, Romeo + Juliet, Titanic, Blood Diamond, The Departed, Shutter Island (sort of), J. Edgar, The Great Gatsby and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

He's an environmentalist, and has produced and narrated several documentaries about environmental issues, most notoriously The 11th Hour.

If you are ever in need of explaining to a non-Japanophile what a Bishonen is, try suggesting Leonardo DiCaprio on his youth.

Leonardo DiCaprio has performed in the following roles:

• Growing Pains (1992): as Luke Brower
• This Boy's Life (1993): as Tobias Wolff, co-starring Robert De Niro as his abusive stepdad
• What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993):Arnie Grape
• The Quick and the Dead (1994): Kid
• The Basketball Diaries (1995): biopic of Jim Carroll's teenage years
• Total Eclipse (1995): biopic of 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud
• Don's Plum (1995 but released in 2002): as Derek
• William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996): as Romeo in the 1996 adaptation
• Marvin's Room (1996): as Hank opposite Meryl Streep
• Titanic (1997): as Jack Dawson
• The Man in the Iron Mask (1998): as twins King Louis XIV and Phillipe
• Celebrity (1998): cameo appearance as Brandon Darrow
• The Beach (2000): as Richard
• Gangs of New York (2002): Amsterdam Vallon
• Catch Me If You Can (2002}: Biopic of Frank Abagnale Jr
• The Aviator (2004): Biopic of multi-millionaire Howard Hughes
• The Departed (2006): plays Billy Costigan alongside Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg
• Blood Diamond (2006): as Danny Archer
• Body Of Lies (2008): as Roger Ferris
• Revolutionary Road (2008): as Frank Wheeler, opposite Kate Winslet in a suburbia setting
• Shutter Island (2010): as Teddy Daniels
• Inception (2010): as Dom Cobb
• J. Edgar (2011): as J. Edgar Hoover
• The Great Gatsby (2012): as Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation.
• Django Unchained (2012): Calvin Candie
• The Wolf of Wall Street (2013): Jordan Belfort
• The Revenant (2015): Hugh Glass
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019): Rick Dalton

Leonardo DiCaprio provides examples of the following tropes:

• Adorkable: His real-life persona. He watches Barney, goes on Youtube and searches for obscure stuff like; 'frogs mating', makes slapstick jokes on the set, is a comic book and baseball card geek, watches anime...

Claire Danes: When I first met Leo I was quite shy and nervous but he was very easy to get along with, [...] In fact I found him quite geeky...but an entertaining geek (laughs)

• Age Lift /PlayingGertrude: In Catch Me If You Can he played 16-year-old Frank Abagnale. Two years later he was playing 40-year old Howard Hughes. A lot of people accuse the casting of being ambitious, to say the least.
• Anti-Hero: Tends to play this type of character in most of his movies
  • Basketball Diaries: A 14-year-old Catholic school student who is also a heroin-junkie and prostitute.
  • Total Eclipse: Plays poet Arthur Rimbaud, who also had an affair with an older man.
    • Among other things.
  • Marvin's Room: Sets his house on fire in the first 10 minutes of the show. Has bipolar disorder and stays in a psychiatric treatment center.
  • Don's Plum and Celebrity: Plays spoiled, bored, rich jerkasses.
  • The Aviator, Shutter Island and Inception: Plays characters with delusional behaviors and a warped sense of reality.
  • The Departed: Plays a character who has to do some really shady things while undercover, such as participating in murder.
  • Blood Diamond: Plays a racist South African merc who kills and cheats his way across Africa for his personal gain.
• Awesome McCoolname: Say it out loud: LEONARDO DICAPRIO. Tell me you don't want to marry his name.
• Blue Eyes: Beautiful baby blues.
• Bishonen: Particularly in his early roles.
• The Charmer: Cheeky, hyperactive and playful during his youth. It's no wonder he scored a lot of ladies.
• Chronically-Killed Actor: When taken to its logical extreme, if he appears in a Baz Luhrmann film his character is doomed (since he plays characters that die in the source material of the two Luhrmann films he's appeared in).
• Deadpan Snarker: Has a sarcastic sense of humor off-screen.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Surprisingly, there are a lot of movies where his character doesn't live happily ever after with his love interest; Titanic, Catch Me If You Can, Inception, The Great Gatsby...
• Even the Guys Want Him: Two words. The Departed.
• Estrogen Brigade Bait: The sudden heart-throb frenzy (dubbed 'Leomania') that erupted after the release of Titanic in 1997 was arguably on-par with the current Twilight craze.
• Fake Nationality: French in Total Eclipse and The Man in the Iron Mask (which were cases of Not Even Bothering with the Accent); and Rhodesian in Blood Diamond.
• Former Child Star: Subverted, he escaped the curse by picking good movies and directors (and was already a highly-talented actor to begin with).
• Former Teen Rebel: Not exactly, but he was known for his wild club-hopping and womanizing younger days.
• Growing the Beard/Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Depending on how you felt about him before, this happened about the time of Gangs of New York/Catch Me If You Can.
• Hair of Gold
• Heterosexual Life Partners: With Tobey Maguire.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Jack Dawson
• Hurting Hero: Nowadays he seems to end up playing this type of character a lot.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Leo has admitted that he hated all the overexposure he got from Titanic, and that he'd rather be known for his talent and not looks. Sometimes it seems like he's deliberately trying to look less attractive with every passing year.
• Memetic Mutation: Pics of his expressions on Django Unchained and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood have become standard reaction memes in social media.
• Mouthy Kid: In his teens.

Director of This Boy's Life, Michael Caton-Jones (affectionately):"He was a smart-mouthed little fuck." Ellen Barkin apparently lectured 17-year-old Leo about clowning around on-set with her and Robert De Niro and said that he should behave more like the two of them. And he retorted, "Like the two of you? Let's see, on one hand he did Raging Bull. On the other hand you did Switch. And you're the one who's telling me what to do?" Leo (wincing): "Oh boy. Yeah. I was a little brick back then. Wow." (GQ Magazine, 2006)

• • Apparently Leo was a small kid in school and had to learn to be a smartass because he couldn't fight the bullies with physical strength.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Gets an Expy in the Resident Evil game series in the form of Steve Burnside; although the character's inclusion was most certainly pushed along by the advent of Titanic being popular, his personality and actions are modeled on DiCaprio's earlier roles.
  • Gilbert (Gil) from Hana Kimi is modeled after Leonardo DiCaprio
  • Wrestler Brian Kendrick went by the name Leonardo Spanky earlier in his career in Japan, due to his resemblance.
• Old Shame: Any mention of Critters 3 would most likely result in a dropkick.
  • Also, he and Tobey Maguire sued to keep Don's Plum from being commercially shown in North America
• Older Than They Look: He looked 14 in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (real age 18), 16 in Total Eclipse and Basketball Diaries (real age 20), 16 in Romeo + Juliet (real age 21), 16 in Catch Me If You Can (real age 28).... you get the drift. Recently he's been looking his age, which may or may not be a good thing.
  • However, based on recent set pictures from J. Edgar, the 36-year-old Leo looks right at home playing a 21-year-old Hoover. As one person put it, he looks about a decade younger clean-shaven.
• One of Us: See Adorkable.
• Platonic Life Partners: With Kate Winslet. They've been bffs since Titanic, and even collaborated again in Revolutionary Road. Both have repeatedly stated that they were close friends and nothing else. Shippers, however...

Kate Winslet: "Before we met, I thought, 'I'm just going to fall completely in love with this guy'. Once I met him, I thought, 'Well, it's true. Leonardo DiCaprio is incredibly beautiful, but no way'. He's just so normal and so — what's the word I'm looking for? — fundamental. Very chatty and so funny that we laughed and joked around. Everybody kept saying, 'God, you two just get on so well'. Leo and I sometimes still talk about it and say, 'Oh, should we have an affair just for the hell of it?' But we wind up agreeing, 'No, we couldn't, because we'd laugh too much'. We just wouldn't be able to take it seriously."

• Playing Against Type: Funnily enough, his role as carefree, charming Jack Dawson in Titanic. He usually plays tortured souls with either a heavy past or troubled personality.
  • Ironically, Jack Dawson seems the closest character Leo has ever played that resembles his real personality off-screen...
    • That, or Arnie from What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
• Rule of Sean Connery
• Smoking Is Cool: He smokes in almost all of his movies, starting from the Basketball Diaries (age 20). In particular, watch out for the scene in Romeo + Juliet in which he's sitting by the beach, calmly puffing away while he writes in his diary and droning Radiohead music plays in the background.
• Star-Making Role: Jack Dawson in Titanic
• Teen Idol: Developed an enormous fanbase of squealing teenage girls after Titanic. Unlike most examples of the trope, his career didn't stop at this stage.
• Took a Level in Badass: After heavyweight roles in Blood Diamond, The Departed, Shutter Island and most recently, Inception, guys are grudgingly admitting his worthiness in the badassery club.
• Typecasting: Double Subverted. After his Star-Making Role in Titanic, media pundits almost unanimously predicted that Leo would be another flash-in-the pan celebrity, typecast as a Bishonen teenage heart-throb before forever vanishing from the limelight after hitting 35. Unusually, he was Genre Savvy enough to move away from pretty boy roles into something grittier and started a very fruitful creative partnership with Martin Scorsese. Ironically, this led DiCaprio to being typecast in crime and/or business dramas, Scorsese's signature genre, where he usually plays intense, morally ambiguous types. Leo's lead role in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi film Inception was seen as an attempt at broadening his acting range... right until it turned out he was playing an intense, morally ambiguous mind thief.
• What Might Have Been: Quentin Tarantino wrote the part of Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds with Leo in mind, but later decided it was best given to a natural-born German with the necessary language skills. However, Leo played the villain in Tarantino's western Django Unchained.

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... We have to go deeper.