Interview with Leonardo DiCaprio
His latest venture is heading up survival epic Revenant and has already had whispers of Oscar nominations. We take a trip down Memory Lane to when we spoke to him in 2010 after he'd just made Inception, where we picked his brains on some of the roles we could have seen him in... His latest venture is heading up survival epic Revenant and has already had whispers of Oscar nominations. We take a trip down Memory Lane to when we spoke to him in 2010 after he'd just made Inception, where we picked his brains on some of the roles we could have seen him in... Do you prefer to be called Leo or Leonardo? Either one is fine. Most people call me Leo.
Didn’t an agent try to make you change your name? Didn’t an agent try to make you change your name? Yeah, when I was 11 years old, when I first wanted to be an actor professionally. We went to an agent and they wanted to change my name to Lenny Williams. That’s not cool... Not really. They felt my name was too ethnic and I wouldn’t get as many jobs. So that thwarted me from being an actor for a number of years. I tried again two years later when I was 13 and got an agent to accept me with my name.
You donate a lot of money to charity. What do you spend on yourself? You donate a lot of money to charity. What do you spend on yourself? I’m not really the type of guy who spends his money on a lot of luxurious stuff. I’m a collector. I collect art and vintage film posters and things of that nature. What do you do when you’re not shooting movies? I travel. I’ve been travelling this whole year and going to a lot of cool places that I’ve always wanted to see and experience. That’s what I do in my off-time. That and trying to find the next good movie to do.
What’s the best place you’ve visited? What’s the best place you’ve visited? Wow… There are quite a few. When I did The Beach in Thailand, that was one of the most amazing places that I’ve ever been. I’m a big scuba-diver, too, so I just went to Galapagos and saw where Charles Darwin formed his theory of evolution and that was pretty spectacular.