The one man Leonardo DiCaprio revered as “the greatest actor of my generation”
Thanks to the body of work he’s amassed over the last 30 years, it’s beyond argument that Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the finest actors of his generation, and a very strong case can be made for him being the best bar none.
Effortlessly navigating the tricky evolution from a child star into a long-tenured veteran, DiCaprio earned his first Academy Award nomination before he’d even left his teenage years. He followed up What’s Eating Gilbert Grape with a powerful turn in The Basketball Diaries, a mischievous supporting part in The Quick and the Dead before Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and James Cameron’s Titanic saw his popularity explode.
Ever since, missteps have been very few and far between, with DiCaprio becoming increasingly selective over which projects he chooses to sign on for. It’s an approach that evidently works, looking at how almost all of his movies for the last two decades have been awards season contenders, but he’s not the type of person who’d pat themselves on the back for a career well done.
There’s an air of bittersweetness to the talent DiCaprio named as his generation’s best, though. Events outside of his control robbed him of the opportunity to meet his performative idol despite the fact that they were only four years apart in age and knew many of the same people.
“I grew up revering River Phoenix as the greatest actor of my generation, and all I ever wanted was to have an opportunity to shake his hand,” he shared with Esquire. “And one night, at a party in Silver Lake, I saw him walk up a flight of stairs. It was almost like something you would see in Vertigo because I saw there was something in his face, and I’d never met him – always wanted to meet him, always wanted to just have an encounter with him – and he was walking toward me, and I kind of froze.”
DiCaprio never did get the chance to meet Phoenix properly because, as fate would tragically have it, that was the very same night he died at the age of only 23. “I don’t know how to describe it,” he continued. “But it’s this existential thing where I felt like he disappeared in front of my very eyes, and the tragedy that I felt afterwards of having lost this great influence for me and all of my friends.”
Phoenix was “the actor we all talked about” among DiCaprio’s inner circle of friends, but that was the closest he came to expressing his admiration. It’s easy to understand why that moment of regret has stuck with him for decades, with his inspiration heading out of the party they were both attending in order to hit the Viper Room, on what would turn out to be the last night of his life.
