Leonardo DiCaprio
Date of Birth : 11 November 1974
Date of Birth : 11 November 1974
Born of an Italian father and a German mother who favoured his artistic skills as best as possible, Leonardo DiCaprio took acting lessons from primary school. Auditioning for the first time in 1988, he began by filming commercials, then very quickly obtained some small roles on television ( The new adventures of Lassie, Santa Barbara ), before being noticed in the series What’s new, doctor ? in 1991. But he was mainly interested in cinema, and after a first horror film ( Critters 3 ), Leonardo DiCaprio was chosen from among four hundred candidates to play Robert De Niro’s abused stepson in Secret Wounds (1993).
Subsequently, he amazes by playing a mentally retarded in Gilbert Grape (1993), where he steals the show from Johnny Depp. Its composition earned him a double nomination as Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes and at the 1994 Oscars. Comfortable in all registers, this gifted person went on in 1995 to a western ( Dead or alive ), an evocation of the life of Arthur Rimbaud ( Rimbaud Verlaine ) and the story of a junkie ( Basketball diaries ).
Choosing his films more on artistic than economic criteria, Leonardo DiCaprio, relegated to the rank of secondary actor, achieved star status in 1996 when Romeo + Juliette was released on the screens., a contemporary and crazy version of the work of William Shakespeare by the Australian Baz Luhrmann. A risky bet, the film is an international success.
But the best is yet to come with Titanic (1997), the unforgettable fresco by James Cameron, whose revenues generated in the United States amount to more than 600 million dollars. Lover of Claire Danes then Kate Winslet on screen, he is a new romantic hero and becomes the object of a real “DiCaprio mania”.
The releases of the Celebrity films by Woody Allen and The Man in the Iron Mask, Titanic, benefit from this surge. From 2.5 million dollars, its cachet rose to 20 million for the initiatory journey of La Plage (2000) by Briton Danny Boyle. The great directors of this world tear it up and entrust him with more mature characters like Steven Spielberg who allows him to play a crook in Catch me if you can.
His collaboration with Martin Scorsese, which began with Gangs of New York (2003), has continued brilliantly over the years and has resulted in several quality films such as Aviator (2004), Les Infiltrés (2006), Shutter Island(2010) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). Success is constantly there.
Most often, the characters he embodies are in the grip of permanent tensions. Evidenced by his services as a mercenary in Blood Diamond (2006), Body of Lies (2008) and a husband facing the crisis that his couple is going through in Revolutionary Road (2009) where he meets Kate Winslet.
Constantly rotating with the greatest directors and fully investing in his roles, Leonardo DiCaprio thus collaborates successively with Christopher Nolan ( Inception ), Clint Eastwood ( J. Edgar ), Quentin Tarantino ( Django Unchained ), Baz Luhrmann (The Great Gatsby ) and Alejandro González Iñárritu ( The Revenant ).
The latter’s western, in which the actor delivers an anthological performance in the skin of a trapper who tries to survive in a most hostile nature, finally allows him to win the Oscar for the best leading role.
