7 Oscar Noms · 1 Win · $7.2B Box Office · 1 Relentless Pursuit
Born November 11, 1974 · Los Angeles, California
He was a kid from East Hollywood who talked his way into audition rooms. Twenty years and six Oscar nominations later, he crawled across a frozen wilderness to finally hold the gold. He didn't become a movie star. He became the last real one.
Six acts. Three decades. One obsessive pursuit of roles that mattered more than fame.
Born on the wrong side of the Hollywood sign, he grew up watching the industry from the outside.
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles to Irmelin, a legal secretary from Germany, and George DiCaprio, an underground comic book artist and distributor. His parents divorced when he was one. He grew up in the rougher neighborhoods of East Hollywood and Los Feliz, surrounded by drug use and prostitution. His mother worked multiple jobs. He started acting in TV commercials at 14, landed a recurring role on Growing Pains at 16, and caught Robert De Niro's attention for This Boy's Life in 1993 — the audition that changed everything.
He chose dark roles. Hollywood chose him as its golden boy anyway. Then a ship hit an iceberg.
DiCaprio followed Gilbert Grape with a string of bold choices: The Basketball Diaries as Jim Carroll's heroin addiction, Romeo + Juliet with Baz Luhrmann reinventing Shakespeare for MTV-era kids, and Marvin's Room opposite Meryl Streep. Then James Cameron called. Titanic was a $200 million gamble that the industry expected to sink. It made $2.2 billion worldwide and turned DiCaprio into the biggest movie star on the planet. He was 23 years old, and the fame nearly destroyed him.
He shed the teen idol skin by working with the greatest living director. Five films. Two decades. One creative partnership for the ages.
DiCaprio made a calculated pivot. He partnered with Martin Scorsese for Gangs of New York in 2002, beginning a five-film collaboration that would redefine both their careers. The Aviator earned him his second Oscar nomination as Howard Hughes. The Departed finally gave Scorsese his long-overdue Oscar. Blood Diamond proved Leo could carry a political thriller. Revolutionary Road reunited him with Kate Winslet for a brutal portrait of suburban despair. The teen idol was gone. The serious actor had arrived.
Every role was a bid for the gold statue. Every loss made the hunger worse. The internet turned his pain into a meme.
Inception with Christopher Nolan made $836M worldwide and proved DiCaprio could open a blockbuster without a franchise. Shutter Island was his fourth Scorsese film. Django Unchained saw him play a villain for the first time — the slaveowner Calvin Candie, a role so vile it made him physically ill to perform. The Wolf of Wall Street was a three-hour cocaine-fueled symphony of excess that earned $392M and his fifth Oscar nomination. The internet, meanwhile, turned "Leo can't win an Oscar" into the defining meme of a generation.
He ate raw bison liver. He slept inside a horse carcass. He crawled through frozen rivers. He finally held the gold.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's The Revenant was the most grueling shoot in modern Hollywood history. Filming in sub-zero temperatures in the Canadian Rockies and Patagonia. Natural light only. DiCaprio performed with minimal dialogue, communicating through grunts, wheezes, and the most physically punishing performance a leading man had attempted since De Niro in Raging Bull. On February 28, 2016, the Academy finally gave him the Oscar. The internet exploded. Twenty-two years of waiting, six nominations, and one raw bison liver later — Leonardo DiCaprio was an Academy Award winner.
Post-Oscar, he became something rarer than a movie star: a movie star who still chooses interesting work.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood reunited him with Brad Pitt and Quentin Tarantino for a love letter to 1969 Los Angeles. Don't Look Up was a climate-change satire that became Netflix's second most-watched film ever. Killers of the Flower Moon with Scorsese was a three-and-a-half hour epic about the Osage murders — his seventh nomination. At 50, DiCaprio remains one of the few actors who can open an original film on name alone. His production company, Appian Way, has produced over 40 films. His environmental foundation has granted over $100 million. The kid from East Hollywood became the conscience of Hollywood.
Directors, co-stars, and the people who shaped the greatest career of his generation.
The case for. The case against. His place in cinema history, argued by the community.
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