The “atrocious” 1972 song that cost Leonardo DiCaprio a role in an Oscar-winning movie
It’s been a long time since Leonardo DiCaprio auditioned for a movie, which might be for the best, since one of the last times he put himself forward for a part, the result was pure shame and embarrassment.
When you’ve been as big a star for as long as he has, and you’ve got a track record of box office and awards season success as he has, the roles come to you, and not the other way around. DiCaprio will most likely never have to read lines again before he’s cast, but there’s one genre you’ll never find him.
So far, it’s become clear that there are certain things the Academy Award winner won’t do. Michael Mann’s Heat 2 looks set to end his avoidance of sequels, but he’s still never played the same part twice. Christopher Nolan’s Inception is his only big-budget, action-packed blockbuster, but apart from that, running and gunning in an expensive crowd-pleaser is another notable absentee.
Superheroes speak for themselves, and he passed that advice on to Timothée Chalamet, which is a little ironic when DiCaprio was considered to play Spider-Man back in the day, and Chalamet auditioned to play Peter Parker before Tom Holland was cast a decade ago, but musicals? No chance.
Along with the romantic comedy, which the star has admitted he isn’t against the idea of trying at least once, DiCaprio has never felt the need to burst into song onscreen. He could have done, though, only for his rendition of a 1972 Bill Withers classic to convince his Romeo + Juliet director, Baz Luhrmann, that he’d be better off looking elsewhere to find his Christian for Moulin Rouge!
“To be honest, I’m not really prepared to do a musical, simply because I think I have a pretty atrocious voice,” he acknowledged. “But we had a friendly thing, where it was me and him and a piano player, and we tried to sing a song together. It didn’t go too well. I think it was ‘Lean on Me.'”
DiCaprio doesn’t look like he can sing, and sure enough, he couldn’t carry a tune to save his life. When the time came to hit the song’s highest note, Luhrmann immediately realised he’d reached a dead-end. “He just turned to me,” his former Romeo recalled. “‘Yes, D, I don’t know if this conversation should continue.'”
Now that he was out of the running, the floor was opened up to virtually every other young or up-and-coming leading man in the business. Ethan Hawke claims that he gave the best audition of his life for Moulin Rogue!, but not good enough to get him the role, clearly, with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal also throwing their hats into the ring.
Of course, it was Ewan McGregor who got the nod, with his pipes and chemistry with Nicole Kidman propelling the picture to big bucks at the box office and eight Oscar nominations, including ‘Best Picture’, where it claimed two prizes for its art direction and costume design. Sadly, no footage exists of DiCaprio butchering ‘Lean on Me’, which he’s no doubt thrilled about.
