(Credits: Far Out / The Weinstein Company / YouTube Still)
Thu 29 May 2025 20:44, UK
Leonardo DiCaprio got his first big break as a teenager on This Boy’s Life, which allowed him to learn from the best in Robert De Niro, who DiCaprio has called his “favourite actor of all time”. It was an experience which has stuck with him and helped him become the Academy Award-winning actor he is today.
DiCaprio has enjoyed a wonderful career in which he has collaborated with legendary directors like Quentin Tarantino, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg and many more, delivering incredible performances with every passing movie, he cannot be typecast into a particular genre.
His roles are scattered all over the spectrum; starting from a scallywag to a notorious gangster, from a vicious plantation owner to a lovesick billionaire, from a fraudster stockbroker to a dream-thief—Leo has done it all (although, we would say that he definitely has a knack for playing a fraudulent billionaire). He is not a classic American method actor; he does not use anecdotes from a character’s personal life. He has certain ground-breaking ideas and mysterious tricks up his sleeve, which often leave the director spellbound.
One of Hollywood’s last movie stars, who is probably why Tarantino tapped him to play the role of a washed-up matinée idol in his ode to the industry’s fading Golden Age, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. He exudes a kind of old-school charisma that all too few stars have these days, and in an age where franchises draw the most loyalty, he is one of the only actors who can lure audiences to theatres through his name alone.
DiCaprio knew from an early age that all he wanted to do with his life was to become an actor, and growing up in Los Angeles meant he was in the best place to follow his fantasy. Having Hollywood in spitting distance of his childhood home allowed him to be ambitious and dream of one day having his name in lights alongside his heroes, such as De Niro.
(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros. Pictures)
During the late 1980s, DiCaprio began to get regular acting work and appeared in the television series Parenthood, which helped establish him as a child star. He soon graduated to feature films, and beating off competition from 400 other boys to land a role alongside De Niro in This Boy’s Life was a landmark achievement that changed the course of DiCaprio’s career.
It was a step up from the low-budget productions he was accustomed to, but De Niro saw something in him which made him handpick the teenager for the role. “I was 15 years old, and I remember every single detail. Everything was so new to me,” he told Time Out of the film. “Watching Robert De Niro on set, seeing his dedication, was one of the most influential experiences of my life,” DiCaprio continued.
In 2014, DiCaprio told Variety he felt greatly intimidated by working alongside De Niro and still feels that way in his presence “to this day”. The Titanic star continued: “He is my favourite actor of all time, he really is. That relationship with him and Scorsese just influenced every one of my friends in the industry that I’ve met through the years.”
He added: “That is sort of the golden relationship of cinema to me. I mean, it just gets no better than that. That run of films that they did together is just… I can’t even talk about it, it’s that mind-blowing.”
DiCaprio also cast his mind on his audition which was daunting because he had to scream in the face of De Niro, which won him the approval of the legendary actor. “He told me, ‘I was the one who said you should get the job,’ which is very sweet,” he said.
Three years later, they worked together again in Marvin’s Room, with DiCaprio cast in the leading role. The pair also starred as fictional versions of themselves alongside Brad Pitt and Martin Scorsese in 2015’s The Audition, where the three actors competed to star in the director’s next film, which displayed the natural chemistry between the duo.
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