The actor who stunned Leonardo DiCaprio: “It was like a ghost came into the room”
Across his lengthy career, Leonardo DiCaprio has worked with some of the biggest names from multiple generations of actors. One of his earliest roles was in The Quick and the Dead, where he acted alongside the legendary Gene Hackman. DiCaprio has since collaborated with dozens of his famous contemporaries and, in recent years, shared the screen with up-and-comers like Margot Robbie and Timothée Chalamet.
At the start of his career, however, DiCaprio was just like any other young actor, astonished at the talent he was working alongside. In one of his first major films, Michael Caton-Jones’ This Boy’s Life, he played the stepson of a character portrayed by Robert De Niro, and it had a substantial effect on him.
“I’d never seen a set that serious before. I’d come from television shows and commercials,” the Titanic star told CBS. “Once De Niro sort of walked onto set, everyone was silent. And I was like, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ It was like a ghost came into the room.”
Once the enormity of De Niro’s presence finally hit home, DiCaprio realised why everyone was taking him so seriously. “I realised the concentration that he put into this,” he continued. “And I think I was very just an instinctual actor at that time. And Michael Caton-Jones, who was the director, kind of laid some foundation for me, basically, ‘Shut up, kid, you know, when we’re tryin’ to be serious… Don’t complain. Pain is temporary. Film is forever. You know, concentrate on the work. Prepare.”
This Boy’s Life marked the first time DiCaprio had landed a major role in a theatrically released movie. His character, Tobias Wolff (whose memoirs the film was based on), struggles with his abusive stepfather, Dwight Hansen (De Niro), who has a stranglehold over him and his depressed mother. The movie itself received mixed reviews, but everyone took notice of the young boy who had delivered such a knockout performance in his big-screen debut. The rest, as they say, is history.
Getting to watch a two-time Oscar winner at such a young age undoubtedly informed how DiCaprio moved forward with his career. “That really gave me the fundamentals of what it was to do a film like that,” he said of his experience on This Boy’s Life. “But it was really watching Bob, in a lot of ways, watching De Niro prepare. And the chances that he would take with each scene – it wasn’t just about reading the dialogue, it was about, you know, creating something out of thin air and embodying that character, and committing to it. And that made a huge impression on me.”
DiCaprio reunited with De Niro four years later on the drama Marvin’s Room, then on the 2015 short film The Audition. In 2023, the duo finally came together under the eye of their mutual friend Martin Scorsese for his film Killers of the Flower Moon. It felt like a full circle moment, as De Niro once again played a father-like figure to DiCaprio in a tale of murder and subterfuge against a backdrop of Native American rights.
Not every young star who works with a big name goes on to have a career like Leo’s. Even at such a tender age, he was able to take on board the lessons De Niro was able to teach him and translate them into a legacy that is on a similar level to the older man’s.
