Leonardo DiCaprio - 45: What roles almost drove the Hollywood star crazy

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On November 11, the famous American actor Leonardo DiCaprio turns 45 years old. During his film career, he has already played more than 50 roles, but some of them were given to him with incredible work and even nearly lost his mind. Shooting in these films affected the physical and mental health of the Hollywood star, and the actor had to take breaks in his career in order to restore mental strength …

Leonardo DiCaprio began to appear on screens since childhood - at the age of 2, 5 he first appeared in an episode of a children's television show. As a teenager, he studied in theater studios, and later continued his studies at the theater department of the University of Los Angeles. His career began with commercials and television series, he even starred in one of the episodes of "Santa Barbara".

Critics call DiCaprio's first success the film "This Boy's Life", where the famous Robert De Niro became the partner of the 18-year-old actor. They say that he himself chose the debutant from dozens of applicants. With everyone, De Niro rehearsed the same scene: his hero, a cruel stepfather, returns home on a platoon, finds a jar with some mustard in the trash can, takes it out and starts poking his stepson in the face: "" According to the script, the boy must was timidly to answer: "Yes." And DiCaprio suddenly knocked the can out of his hands and yelled right in his face: "No-no!" De Niro chuckled: "". According to critics, in this film, DiCaprio surpassed his eminent partner. Later in his film career there will be many more moments when he played "a little too much, but good" - it often seemed that even on the verge of possibilities.

Real popularity came to him at the age of 19, when DiCaprio played one of the main roles in the film "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", for which he was first nominated for an Oscar. The actor got the role of a teenager with a developmental delay, and in order to accurately create the image of a mentally unhealthy boy, DiCaprio watched the patients of a special hospital for children with retarded mental development for several weeks. This was the first and not the only role that cost the actor a lot of mental effort.

He often took on rather complex roles, choosing images of young people in conflict with a hostile world - for example, the drug addict in The Basketball Diaries and the poet Arthur Rimbaud in Total Eclipse. The latter work received a lot of critical reviews - they say that the actor did not play an innovative poet, but an eccentric, arrogant and hysterical young man who likes to shock others, just like the heroes of his other films. It seemed that the actor was testing himself, choosing those roles that took him out of peace of mind. Even his father then said: "".

DiCaprio always wanted to act in independent films, but he did not like genre films. Nevertheless, he became the idol of millions of girls around the world in the role of romantic heroes-lovers - in the films Romeo + Juliet and Titanic. The role of Jack Dawson took the actor to the pinnacle of popularity, and the test of fame was his first serious lesson. While "dikapriomania" was spreading in the world, he himself regretted that for the sake of "Titanic" he gave up the role of a porn star of the 1970s. in the low-budget tragicomedy "Boogie Nights".

Later, the actor admitted that at 23 he was not ready for world fame and almost went crazy from the popularity that had fallen on him. According to him, he was then not old enough to survive his transformation into a Hollywood superstar: "".

"" - said the actor.

After "Titanic" directors bombarded DiCaprio with new proposals, but he treated them very selectively and rejected most of them in order to give himself time to come to his senses and deal with internal problems. He turned down roles in Star Wars, The Matrix and Spider-Man. The exceptions were The Man in the Iron Mask, The Beach, Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can. And the next work, which cost the actor great mental effort, was the film "Aviator", where DiCaprio played the famous American millionaire Howard Hughes. As you know, he suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is characterized by obsessive-compulsive disorders. The fear of germs grew in Hughes into a real mania.

This role became a real test for DiCaprio, because he also suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder from childhood. Many neuroses - from a pathological fear of dirt to the desire to walk through a doorway several times - forced him to see a doctor, who as a result gave him this diagnosis. All the more interesting for him was the image of Howard Hughes - a man with a similar neurosis. On the set of "Aviator" DiCaprio got used to the role so that the symptoms of his illness worsened, and obsessions became more frequent. He confessed that from childhood he could not calmly walk along the sidewalk - he tried not to step on cracks in the asphalt, and if he accidentally stepped on, he would come back and walk the path again: "".

However, the most serious test for the actor was the film, which brought him the long-awaited Oscar statuette, The Survivor. The name became symbolic for DiCaprio, although he himself would probably have called this work "Almost out of his mind." The process of getting used to the image became a personal hell for him: the actor had to lie in the carcass of a dead horse, eat raw bison meat and fry mice on fire, sacrificing his own principles - after all, everyone knows DiCaprio as a convinced vegetarian and a well-known animal protector. He didn't play - he was forced to actually survive in the wild.

According to the director's idea, the actor was supposed to feel "on his own skin" how the colonists survived in the Missouri River valley in the first third of the nineteenth century. Sometimes it seemed to DiCaprio that the director was testing him for strength, forcing him to perform difficult tasks close to the conditions of an extreme situation. Later he said: "". However, DiCaprio passed all the tests with honor and received the long-awaited award - "Oscar", as well as a number of other film awards.

For many, even today, despite world fame, it remains a complete mystery: 25 little-known facts about Leonardo DiCaprio.