Facts about Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio Biography
Leonardo DiCaprio has been an international superstar since he starred in the box office megahit Titanic (1997, directed by James Cameron). He won an Oscar as best actor for his stunning performance in 2015’s The Revenant.
DiCaprio has been in front of the camera since childhood, but his first big role came in 1991, on the television series Growing Pains. As a young movie actor he won critical raves for his role in This Boy’s Life (1993, with Robert DeNiro), and an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993, with Johnny Depp).
His performance in 1996’s Romeo and Juliet proved his bankability as a leading man and heartthrob, and after the success of Titanic (with Kate Winslet), DiCaprio became a favorite of the tabloids, gaining a hearty Hollywood party-boy reputation. He kept on working, however, and grew into one of Hollywood’s most busy and bankable movie actors.
Along the way he appeared in Woody Allen‘s Celebrity (1998, with Gretchen Mol), starred in Steven Spielberg‘s Catch Me If You Can (2002, with Christopher Walken) and made movies with Martin Scorsese, including Gangs of New York (2002, co-starring Cameron Diaz), The Aviator (he was nominated for an Oscar for playing eccentric innovator Howard Hughes), The Departed (2006, starring Matt Damon), Shutter Island (2009) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023, co-starring Robert DeNiro).
His performance in Blood Diamond (2006, with Djimon Hounsou) brought him another Oscar nomination.
DiCaprio’s other films include The Basketball Diaries (1985), Revolutionary Road (2008, with Kate Winslet), Inception (2010, co-starring Tom Hardy), J. Edgar (2011, as J. Edgar Hoover) and Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained (2012, starring Jamie Foxx).
He finally won the best actor Oscar in 2016 for his rugged and ragged leading role in the mountain-man epic The Revenant, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. He was Oscar-nominated again in 2020 for playing a fading actor in the Tarantino film Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood.
Extra credit
Off-screen, Leonard DiCaprio is an advocate for environmental protection, an issue he became publicly involved with after he and the makers of The Beach (2000) were criticized for the environmental impact their filming had on locations in Thailand… He has dated widely; his past girlfriends include the models Gisele Bundchen, Bar Refaeli and Erin Heatherton.