Leonardo DiCaprio

• 1. An Unlikely Namesake

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  Leonardo DiCaprio owes his first name to a kick. His pregnant mother felt the baby move while she stood before a Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Uffizi museum in Florence, Italy. That child grew up to be an American actor and film producer whose lead roles have brought in roughly seven billion dollars at the box office. He has collected numerous major awards, and eight times he has appeared among the world's highest-paid actors.

  Those numbers hide a stranger story. This documentary follows an actor who turned down parts that became landmarks, accepted pay cuts for parts that paid off, and spent years steering his fame toward the natural world. It asks what he refused, what he risked, and why so many people hold strong opinions about a man who rarely gives interviews.

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• 2. Los Angeles Beginnings

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  Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born on the 11th of November 1974, the only child of Irmelin Indenbirken and George DiCaprio. Irmelin was a legal secretary from Germany. George was an American underground comix artist and distributor. When their son was one year old they divorced, yet they kept raising him together by moving into twin cottages that shared a garden in Echo Park. He later described his parents as "bohemian in every sense of the word". He has also said he grew up poor, in a neighborhood marked by crime and violence.

  John Marshall High School did not hold him for long. He disliked public school and wanted to audition for acting jobs instead, so he dropped out and later earned a general equivalency diploma.

  A $50,000 paycheck helped steer him toward acting. His stepbrother earned that sum for appearing in a television commercial, which motivated young Leonardo, who had imagined becoming either an actor or a marine biologist. He also loved imitating people and watching how audiences reacted. At 11 he almost quit acting for breakdancing, after taking second place in a competition in Germany, his mother's native country.

  At 14 he began appearing in Matchbox car commercials, which he calls his first role. Kraft Singles, Bubble Yum and Apple Jacks commercials followed. In 1989 he played Glen in two episodes of The New Lassie.

  The name Lenny Williams nearly became his professional identity. After a long search for representation, he finally found an agent who suggested that name to appeal to American audiences, and DiCaprio refused. He then stayed jobless for a year and a half despite 100 auditions. He was ready to give up until his father convinced him to keep going. A talent agent who knew a friend of his mother's then recommended him to casting directors, and he landed about 20 commercials.

  By 1990 he had appeared in the pilot of The Outsiders and in an episode of the soap opera Santa Barbara, where he played an alcoholic teenager. Parenthood came next, and to play the troubled teen Garry Buckman he studied Joaquin Phoenix's performance in the 1989 film that inspired the series.

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• 3. Breakthrough Roles

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  Critters 3, a low-budget horror sequel, gave him his film debut in 1991. He now calls it possibly one of the worst films of all time. The same year he joined the sitcom Growing Pains as Luke Brower, a homeless boy taken in by the show's central family. Producers hoped he would draw young female viewers, but the ratings did not improve and he left before the series ended. Co-star Joanna Kerns remembered him as "especially intelligent and disarming for his age", and also as mischievous on set.

  Robert De Niro picked him from a shortlist of 400 young actors in 1992 to co-star in This Boy's Life. The film follows a rebellious teenager named Toby, played by DiCaprio, with his mother, played by Ellen Barkin, and his abusive stepfather, played by De Niro. Director Michael Caton-Jones said the young actor did not know how to behave on set. He responded with a strict mentoring style, and the behavior improved.

  Director Lasse Hallstrom doubted DiCaprio at first for What's Eating Gilbert Grape in 1993. He thought the young actor too good-looking to play the developmentally disabled brother of Johnny Depp's character. Caton-Jones had recommended DiCaprio anyway, and he won the part by emerging as "the most observant" auditionee. He studied children with similar impairments, and Hallstrom let him build the character from what he had learned. At 19 he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, becoming the seventh-youngest nominee in that category. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the performance had "a sharp, desperate intensity from beginning to end."

  Sharon Stone paid his salary herself in 1995, after Sony Pictures grew doubtful about his casting in Sam Raimi's western The Quick and the Dead. That year he also played a teenage Jim Carroll, a drug-addicted high school basketball player and budding writer, in The Basketball Diaries. In Total Eclipse he played the poet Arthur Rimbaud opposite David Thewlis as Paul Verlaine, a part that opened up when River Phoenix died before filming began. He wanted to showcase his acting talent rather than his much-discussed looks. Director Agnieszka Holland made the film, which failed commercially.

  Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, released in 1996, paired him with Claire Danes in a modern setting that kept Shakespeare's original dialogue. He was unsure about yet another adaptation of the play, but his father suggested he look closer at Luhrmann's work. A two-week workshop of exchanging ideas followed, and the collaboration was born. Film scholar Murray Pomerance observed that DiCaprio's new popularity helped the film turn a profit within days of its release. It earned him a Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 1997 Berlin International Film Festival.

  In Marvin's Room that same year, he played Hank, the troubled son of Meryl Streep's character. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly praised "the deeply gifted DiCaprio" for holding his own opposite Streep and Diane Keaton.

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• 4. After Titanic

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  Titanic carried a production budget of more than $200 million, which made it the most expensive film in history at the time. DiCaprio and Kate Winslet played lovers from different social classes aboard RMS Titanic. He had doubts about the role, but director James Cameron encouraged him to take it.

  The film earned more than $2.1 billion worldwide and won 11 Academy Awards, the most for any film. DiCaprio himself received no Oscar nomination, and more than 200 fans staged a protest against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  The adoration of teenage girls and young women became known as "Leo-mania". He tried to shed the teen idol image that came with it. In 2000 he said: "I have no connection with me during that whole Titanic phenomenon and what my face became around the world." He chose to cut back his workload, hoping to hear his own voice in picking roles.

  In The Man in the Iron Mask, released in 1998, he played both the villainous King Louis XIV and his secret, sympathetic twin brother Philippe. The film grossed $180 million against a budget of $35 million. Critic Owen Gleiberman called him "a fluid and instinctive actor, with the face of a mischievous angel". Even so, he won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screen Couple in 1999 for the dual roles.

  A reported $20 million salary had put him in an earlier version of American Psycho. After disagreements with director Oliver Stone, he left and took the lead in The Beach instead. Based on Alex Garland's 1996 novel, it cast him as a backpacking American tourist who ends up in a secret island commune in the Gulf of Thailand. The film cost $50 million and earned almost three times that, but critics were negative and he received a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Actor. The production was also criticized for damaging its filming location in Thailand, and DiCaprio worked to restore the area.

  He auditioned for Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! in 2001 and was rejected, which he later blamed on his poor singing. In 2002 he also turned down the role of Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones, feeling unprepared to "take that dive". Meanwhile, a favor to aspiring director R. D. Robb had come back to haunt him. In the mid-1990s he appeared in Don's Plum, a mostly improvised black-and-white short. When Robb expanded it into a feature in the early 2000s, DiCaprio and co-star Tobey Maguire blocked its release in the US and Canada by court order.

  The price of Titanic included a role he had rejected for it, in Boogie Nights. In 2025 he said he regretted that decision, calling the film "a profound movie of my generation".

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• 5. The Scorsese Years

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  Gangs of New York, released in 2002, took an eight-month shoot and cost $103 million, the most expensive film Martin Scorsese had ever made. Scorsese had struggled to get the project financed until DiCaprio showed interest, which brought in Miramax Films. DiCaprio played Amsterdam Vallon, the young leader of an Irish-American street gang in the Five Points district of mid-19th-century New York. He was drawn to the part because it marked a shift from boyish roles to a mature leading man. The film earned $193 million worldwide.

  Catch Me If You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg, arrived the same year. It tells the story of Frank Abagnale Jr., who committed check fraud and made millions in the 1960s before his 19th birthday. The shoot covered 147 different locations in 52 days. The film grossed $355 million against a budget of $52 million, and two Entertainment Weekly critics in 2018 called it his best role.

  Howard Hughes drew DiCaprio and Scorsese together again for The Aviator in 2004. Hughes was a film director and aviation pioneer who suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. DiCaprio had first developed the project with Michael Mann, who was eventually replaced by Scorsese. He also co-produced it. The film grossed $213 million against a budget of $110 million, and it brought him his first Golden Globe for Best Actor in a drama.

  In The Departed in 2006, DiCaprio played Billy Costigan, a state trooper working undercover in the Irish Mob in Boston. He described the character as living in a "constant 24-hour panic attack". To prepare, he visited Boston to meet people connected to the Irish Mob and gained 15 lb of muscle. Working with Jack Nicholson produced a scene he called "one of the most memorable moments" of his life as an actor. The film grossed $291 million against a budget of $90 million. Warner Bros. Pictures submitted his performance as supporting, to avoid conflict with his other 2006 film, Blood Diamond, and co-star Mark Wahlberg was nominated instead.

  Shutter Island in 2010 cast him as U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels, who investigates a psychiatric facility on an island and begins to question his own sanity. Disturbing scenes gave DiCaprio nightmares of mass murder, and he treated relaxing with friends as a kind of therapy. The film grossed $294 million against a budget of $80 million.

  The Wolf of Wall Street, his fifth film with Scorsese, grew from a bidding war in 2007. DiCaprio and Warner Bros. won the rights to stockbroker Jordan Belfort's memoir, outbidding Brad Pitt and Paramount Pictures. He admired the book's honest and unapologetic tone and was inspired by the 2008 financial crisis to make the film. Critic Jonathan Romney said he excelled at "rubber-limbed slapstick". The role earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a musical or comedy, plus Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Picture.

  DiCaprio calls his relationship with Scorsese dreamlike and credits the director with teaching him the history of film. Critic Jesse Hassenger compared their partnership to Scorsese's work with Robert De Niro. For Killers of the Flower Moon in 2023, DiCaprio was first signed to play FBI agent Thomas Bruce White Sr. He insisted on the morally complex murderer Ernest Burkhart instead, which led to extensive script rewrites. He was paid $30 million.

  As of February 2026, he had begun shooting What Happens at Night, directed by Scorsese and also starring Jennifer Lawrence and Mads Mikkelsen.

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• 6. Craft and Gambles

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  Six months in Africa preceded Blood Diamond, in which DiCaprio played a diamond smuggler from Rhodesia caught up in the Sierra Leone Civil War. He learned about camouflage from people in the South African military and recorded local speakers to refine his accent. Reviewers noted that accent, which is generally known as difficult to imitate. On set he worked with 24 orphaned children from the SOS Children's Village in Maputo, Mozambique.

  Raw bison liver was part of his job in The Revenant, released in 2015. As fur trapper Hugh Glass, he also slept in animal carcasses, learned to shoot a musket and build a fire, and spoke two Native American languages, Pawnee and Arikara. He studied ancient healing techniques as well. The film cost $135 million and earned $533 million worldwide. It won him the Academy Award for Best Actor, along with the BAFTA, Critics' Choice and Screen Actors Guild prizes.

  A bet on ticket sales shaped Inception in 2010. DiCaprio accepted a pay cut from his $20 million fee in exchange for first-dollar gross points, a percentage of cinema ticket sales. He played Dom Cobb, an extractor who enters the dreams of others to obtain information. The film cost $160 million and grossed $836 million, and DiCaprio earned $50 million, his highest payday yet.

  Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained in 2012 tested his comfort. After reading the script, DiCaprio felt uneasy about the extent of racism it portrayed as plantation owner Calvin Candie. His co-stars and Tarantino convinced him not to sugarcoat it. During filming he accidentally cut his hand on glass and kept going, and Tarantino used that take in the final film. It grossed $425 million on a budget of $100 million.

  For Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in 2019, DiCaprio and Brad Pitt each took a pay cut to $10 million to help the film's financing. DiCaprio returned to acting after a four-year break to play Rick Dalton, an aging television actor, opposite Pitt as his stuntman Cliff Booth. Tarantino called them the most exciting pairing since Robert Redford and Paul Newman. The film earned $374 million against a budget of $90 million.

  Five months of rewriting the script with director Adam McKay came before DiCaprio agreed to appear in Don't Look Up in 2021. He and Jennifer Lawrence play two astronomers who try to warn humanity about an extinction-level comet. The film set a Netflix record with 152 million hours viewed in a single week. DiCaprio saw it as an analogy for the world's indifference to the climate crisis.

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• 7. Producer and Climate Voice

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  In 2004 DiCaprio founded Appian Way Productions, named after an Italian road. He wanted to find unusual source material and keep its essence intact, having seen earlier projects shaped for the worse by too many hands. The first project he executive-produced there was The Assassination of Richard Nixon, with Sean Penn as Samuel Byck, which screened at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

  The 11th Hour, a 2007 documentary he produced, co-wrote and narrated, examined the state of the natural environment. It won the Earthwatch Environmental Film Award in 2008. Appian Way also produced Greensburg, a three-season series that ran on Planet Green from 2008 to 2010. It followed the sustainable rebuilding of Greensburg, Kansas, after the 2007 tornado. Virunga, a 2014 British documentary he executive-produced, follows four people trying to protect the world's last mountain gorillas from war and poaching. It earned him an Emmy nomination in 2015.

  In 1998 he established the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, a non-profit devoted to promoting environmental awareness. By 2018 it had funded more than 200 projects, providing $100 million in support. In 2013 a benefit auction called "11th Hour" raised nearly $38.8 million for it. In July 2017 a charity auction and celebrity concert arranged by the foundation raised over $30 million in a single night.

  At Russia's Tiger Summit, DiCaprio donated $1 million to the Wildlife Conservation Society. He reached the event after two plane delays, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called him a "muzhik", or "real man".

  In September 2014, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named him a UN Messenger of Peace with a focus on climate change. Later that month, his opening statement to the UN Climate Summit reached an estimated one billion people. In 2015 he announced his intention to divest from fossil fuels, and in May 2021 he pledged $43 million for conservation across the Galapagos Islands. Critics have called his use of private jets and large yachts hypocritical because of their carbon footprints.

  In December 2013 he became a co-founder of the Venturi Racing team, alongside Monegasque businessman Gildo Pallanca Pastor. Venturi was one of ten founding teams of the Formula E electric racing series. Driver Edoardo Mortara gave the team its first win at the 2019 Hong Kong ePrix. Venturi won eight races in all and finished second in the championship in 2021-22, before Stellantis took it over and renamed it Maserati MSG Racing. In October 2015 DiCaprio was named chairman of the Formula E Sustainability Committee, and he later produced And We Go Green, a documentary about the 2017-18 season, released in May 2019.

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• 8. Image and Scrutiny

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  In 1998, New York magazine published an article by journalist Nancy Jo Sales about a group of young celebrity men that included DiCaprio. She wrote that their pursuit was to "chase girls, pick fights and not tip the waitress". While parachuting, DiCaprio almost got himself and his friend Justin Herwick killed when his parachute failed to open, until his instructor opened the reserve. He said he is fond of doing things that scare him. Senator John McCain called him "an androgynous wimp". DiCaprio found the perception exaggerated, saying: "They want you miserable, just like them."

  Steven Spielberg defended the so-called party boy, describing him as family-oriented during the making of Catch Me If You Can. Carole Cadwalladr of The Guardian found him polite and charming, yet wrote that he gives "almost no hint whatsoever of his actual personality". In 1998 he also sued Playgirl magazine over plans to publish a fully nude picture of him.

  In 2005, a model named Aretha Wilson hit him over the head with a broken bottle at a Hollywood party. He needed seventeen stitches to his face and neck. Wilson pleaded no contest to the assault and was sentenced in 2010 to two years in prison.

  The gifts from a film company became a legal problem in 2017. Red Granite Pictures, producer of The Wolf of Wall Street, was drawn into the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal. DiCaprio turned over to the US government the gifts he had received from people at the company, including fugitive businessman Jho Low. They included the Best Actor Oscar trophy won by Marlon Brando, a $3.2 million Pablo Picasso painting and a $9 million Jean-Michel Basquiat collage.

  On the 30th of December 2019, DiCaprio was vacationing near St. Barts when a mayday call went out for a man who had fallen overboard. His boat was the only vessel to respond, and he agreed to divert it. The crew rescued the man, who had been treading water for 11 hours, shortly before a storm hit.

  In June 2025 he drew criticism for attending the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, given Amazon's environmental record and his own activism. A photo showed him hiding his face with a baseball cap. In July 2025, activists criticized him for co-financing a luxury hotel project near Tel Aviv in Israel, and he has not commented.

  Still, the praise has been steady. In 2005 France made him a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, and in 2016 Time magazine named him among the 100 most influential people in the world. In a 2022 readers' poll, Empire voted him one of the 50 greatest actors of all time. A writer for The Hollywood Reporter observed that he built his career without a comic book movie, family film or pre-branded franchise, adding: "Leo is the franchise."

  In December 2025 he confirmed he had been cast, in an undisclosed role, in Michael Mann's planned sequel to the 1995 film Heat.

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