Leonardo DiCaprio Bio

Leonardo DiCaprio Biography

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This Leonardo DiCaprio biography contains information believed to be accurate as extracted from sources around the internet including Wikipedia. If you believe there are errors or omissions in this Leonardo DiCaprio bio, please let us know so that we can correct any inaccuracies.

Leonardo DiCaprio Pictures

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (born November 11, 1974) is a three-time Academy Award-nominated, SAG Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actor who garnered world wide fame for his role as Jack Dawson in Titanic (1997). DiCaprio has starred in many other successful feature films including Romeo + Juliet (1996), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and Blood Diamond (2006). He has appeared in Martin Scorsese's recent films, including Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), and The Departed (2006), causing people to compare this relationship to that from which actor Robert De Niro benefited early in his career.

Leonardo DiCaprio: Early life

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is of half Italian and half German descent. His parents met while attending college together and subsequently moved to Los Angeles. He was named after artist Leonardo da Vinci, as his pregnant mother was standing in front of a Leonardo painting at a museum in Italy when DiCaprio first kicked.

His parents divorced when he was one. He lived mostly with his mother, although his father was around intermittently. During his childhood, he attended Canterbury Elementary School. He was interested in baseball cards, comic books and frequently visited museums, with his father. He also spent part of his childhood in Germany, where his maternal grandparents, Wilhelm and Helene, still lived. DiCaprio and his mother lived in several neighborhoods, such as Echo Park.

During his teen years, he lived at 1874 Hillhurst Avenue, Los Feliz district of Los Angeles, California (which was later converted into a local public library) and his mother worked several jobs to support them. He attended John Marshall High School, a few blocks away, before attending the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies.

He was inspired to become an actor after Adam Starr, a stepbrother from his father's re-marriage, began appearing in commercials. DiCaprio began looking for an agent at the age of twelve, but was initially turned down several times; one agent suggested that he anglicize his name to "Lenny Williams", which DiCaprio rejected.

Leonardo DiCaprio: Career

Leonardo DiCaprio - Early career

DiCaprio's acting career began in 1989 when he was cast in the role of Garry Buckman on the TV version of the film Parenthood where he met Tobey Maguire, with whom he is best friends. Shortly after, the friends helped each other get their roles in their TV shows and movies. In that same year, DiCaprio appeared on the soap opera Santa Barbara in the role of Mason Capwell (in flashbacks as a teenager). From 1991 to 1992 he had the role of Luke Brower, a homeless boy, on Growing Pains.

However, DiCaprio is most famous for his roles in motion pictures. His debut film role was as Josh in Critters 3 (1991), a film with a limited theatrical release, which was released on video soon after.

Two years later, his breakthrough came with the role of Toby in This Boy's Life (1993) co-starring with Robert De Niro and Ellen Barkin, which led the New York Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics to name him runner-up for Best Supporting Actor. In the same year he also portrayed a mentally handicapped boy in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993). The role earned him his first Academy Award nomination, at the age of 19.

1995 was an eventful year for DiCaprio. That year he starred in four films; the first film, The Quick and The Dead, he played Gene Hackman's alleged son, Fee, starring alongside Sharon Stone and a soon-to-be-famous Russell Crowe. It is said Stone helped pay his salary to star in the film.

After The Quick and The Dead, he starred in Total Eclipse, a fictionalized account of the passionate and violent homosexual relationship between the two 19th century French poets, Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis) and Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo DiCaprio). River Phoenix was originally cast as the lead in the film, but after his 1993 death, DiCaprio was cast.

The black-and-white movie Don's Plum, a low-budget drama featuring the actor and some of his friends (including Tobey Maguire), Kevin Connolly, Jenny Lewis, Scott Bloom, Ethan Suplee, Medow Sisto, Heather McComb, Amber Benson and Jeremy Sisto was filmed between 1995 and 1996. Its release was later limited to distribution outside the US and Canada by a mutual agreement between DiCaprio, Maguire, RD Robb, the film's director, David Stutman and Dale Wheatley the film's producers and Jerry Meadors the film's executive producer. Don's Plum had its world premiere on February 9, 2001 in Berlin.

That year he also starred as Jim Carroll, a heroin addict in The Basketball Diaries. His next film, 1996's Romeo + Juliet, a slick and updated modern-day version of William Shakespeare's play of the same name, directed by Australian director Baz Luhrmann again featured DiCaprio as the male lead, with Claire Danes as Juliet. DiCaprio was reportedly so dedicated to the project that he flew coach class for free to Australia a year before production started to workshop the film. Following Romeo + Juliet, in 1996 DiCaprio starred in Marvin's Room alongside Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton.

Leonardo DiCaprio - Superstardom and "Leo-Mania"

DiCaprio in 2000

The move from "star" to "superstar" came when DiCaprio played Jack Dawson in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, the highest grossing movie ever. He plays a young poor boy who gambles a ticket on to the great ship, and falls in love with rich Rose (who is engaged). The film also received 11 Academy Awards. Over the course of the next few years he would become a household name worldwide, synonymous with labels such as "teenage heart-throb" and sex symbol. People placed him in their annual "Most Beautiful People" issue on numerous occasions. At the peak of his celebrity in 1998, DiCaprio fronted scores of magazine covers ranging from Vanity Fair to Rolling Stone, and was once the most searched for personality in the early years of the Internet. In 1998, DiCaprio agreed to play the spoof role of his real life "teen idol" persona during this period, in Woody Allen's satirical parody, Celebrity. Also that year he played dual roles as evil King Louis XIV and his imprisoned twin brother Philippe in The Man in the Iron Mask which was a loose adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's novels. What came apropos with fame were tales in the tabloids of excesses and indulgence. In the Japanese media, he was referred to as Leo-sama (レオ様), with the "sama" suffix given to show the utmost respect. Time summed up the fame superhighway and its trappings in an interview with the actor in 2000, reporting:

Nonetheless, the headlines and controversy failed to let up, peaking when he starred in a project by Danny Boyle based on Alex Garland's backpacker cult classic The Beach that year. Because of clashes with the Thai authorities over the use of the island of Ko Phi Phi in 1999, the film garnered more bad press than expected. It was reported that permission granted to the film company to physically alter the environment inside Phi Phi Islands National Park was illegal. In the end, the film also did not score as well as expected at the box office, losing mainstream commercial appeal due to its content.

Leonardo DiCaprio - Critically acclaimed acting

In 2002, DiCaprio began a shift away from his stereotypical image and moved to engage himself with critically acclaimed directors by starring in two epic movies: Gangs of New York (directed by Martin Scorsese), and Catch Me If You Can (directed by Steven Spielberg). Both films were very well received by critics. Forging a collaboration with Scorsese, the two paired again for a biopic of American businessman Howard Hughes in The Aviator, a film that scored DiCaprio a second Academy Award nomination, for Best Actor.

DiCaprio at the Gangs of New York screening at the Cannes Film Festival with Martin Scorsese and Cameron Diaz

DiCaprio continued his run with Scorsese (some claim him to be Scorsese's "new De Niro") in the 2006 film The Departed as Billy Costigan, a smart undercover cop in Boston. His next film was Blood Diamond, released on December 8, 2006. While the film itself received mixed reviews, DiCaprio was praised for the authenticity of his Zimbabwean Afrikaaner accent, known as a difficult accent of English to emulate. He is also reported to have purchased the rights to Blink, Malcolm Gladwell's book on the power and validity of first impressions, in order to produce a film based on it.

Cruise/Wagner Productions, Tom Cruise's film production company, is said to be developing a screenplay based on Erik Larson's New York Times bestseller The Devil in the White City, about H. H. Holmes, a serial killer at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Meanwhile, DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way Productions, is also developing a film about Holmes and the World's Fair, in which DiCaprio will star.

In 2006, the Golden Globes and Broadcast Film Critics Association nominated DiCaprio twice in the same category: Best Actor for Blood Diamond and The Departed, which is an extremely rare honor for actors. Also in the same year, he received two nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, a lead actor nomination for Blood Diamond and a supporting actor nomination for The Departed. He earned an Oscar nomination for lead actor in Blood Diamond and a BAFTA nod for lead actor for The Departed.

After working in two Warner Brothers films, DiCaprio will again star in a WB production for a film about the collapse of Enron, based on the book Conspiracy of Fools. The film's script is currently under negotiations.

He is also reportedly attached to a number of other upcoming projects, including The Chancellor Manuscript, Stephen Gaghan's Blink, a biopic of LSD-spokesperson Professor Timothy Leary, and two projects in collaboration with Martin Scorsese, Ashecliffe, an adaptation of a novel by Dennis Lehane, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, and Ridley Scott directed Low Dweller. All projects are in the developmental stages.

DiCaprio re-teamed with his Titanic co-stars Kate Winslet and Kathy Bates in the adaptation of Richard Yates' critically-lauded 1961 novel Revolutionary Road. The film of the same name was adapted for the screen by Justin Haythe and was directed by Winslet's husband, Sam Mendes. It is scheduled for release in December 2008.

DiCaprio currently is ranked the 9th Best Working Actor Today by The Screen Directory. In May 2007, he was listed among Time's 100 Most Influential People in The World.

DiCaprio along with Mark Wahlberg is slated to star in the remake of the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys, which chronicles the story of the largest cocaine trafficker in Miami in the 1970s and 1980s. Wahlberg will play the drug kingpin Jon Roberts with DiCaprio as "the airplane pilot who travels with Mark's character to obtain kilos of cocaine from Pablo Escobar."

Leonardo DiCaprio: Personal life

A committed environmentalist, DiCaprio has received praise from environmental groups for opting to fly on commercial flights instead of chartering private jets, which use more fuel. He has also mentioned that he drives a hybrid car and that his house has solar panels. His actions have inspired other celebrities, such as Orlando Bloom and Penelope Cruz. In an article in Ukula about his new film 11th Hour (which he co-wrote, co-produced and narrated), DiCaprio cites global warming as "the number one environmental challenge." DiCaprio and former vice-president Al Gore announced at the 2007 Oscar ceremony that the Oscars had incorporated environmentally intelligent practices throughout the planning and production processes, thus affirming their commitment to the environment. On July 7, 2007, DiCaprio presented at the American leg of Live Earth. During the 2004 Presidential election, DiCaprio campaigned and donated to John Kerry's presidential bid. In March 2008, DiCaprio endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency.

In 1998, he and his mother donated $35,000 dollars for a state-of-the-art "Leonardo DiCaprio Computer Center" at the Los Feliz branch of the Los Angeles Public Library (1874 Hillhurst Avenue) which happens to be the site of his childhood home. It was rebuilt after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and opened in early 1999. There are commemorative placards and curious fans are welcomed at the library.

During the filming of Blood Diamond, DiCaprio worked with 24 orphaned children from the SOS Children's Village in Maputo, Mozambique, and was said to be extremely touched by his interactions with the children.

DiCaprio owns a home in Los Angeles and an apartment in New York. He bought an island in Belize where he is planning to create an eco-friendly resort, as well as an apartment in Riverhouse, an eco-friendly building overlooking the Hudson River.

In January, 2008, extradition processes began against Aretha Wilson, 37, who escaped to Toronto, Ontario, Canada after seriously injuring Leonardo DiCaprio with a broken beer bottle at a June 20, 2005 Hollywood Hills party. She also has pending aggravated assault cases.

He was recently invited to The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh, Scotland, to talk about his foundation which is to raise awareness of our environment. It is not yet known if he has accepted the offer, due to his busy schedule in Hollywood.

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