The one character Leonardo DiCaprio will always despise: ‘Incredibly horrific’
Leonardo DiCaprio has long established himself as one of the world’s most recognisable acting talents because of his incredible filmography, which is full of powerful projects. Right from the very beginning of his acclaimed film career, DiCaprio delivered wonderful performances which propelled him towards unprecedented success and stardom. He may have dallied with a role as America’s heartthrob, but he was soon regarded as one of the best actors of his generation with a series of widely acclaimed performances.
While many fans still revisit DiCaprio’s older classics, such as Titanic and Catch Me If You Can, others wait each year for his latest work. He garnered a lot of acclaim for his performance in Don’t Look Up, a hard-hitting satirical project by Adam McKay that explored the attitude towards environmental collapse and the magnetic role he took in Martin Scorsese’s The Killers of the Flower Moon.
Given that DiCaprio has reached the very top of the film industry, he is in complete control of the projects he participates in, carefully creating a résumé that reads like no other actor in the world. However, on one occasion, the actor felt as if his role in a film was not right for him at all but he decided to do it anyway.
That film was none other than Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained where he played the role of Calvin Candie, an evil plantation owner whose nature was fundamentally brutal. According to DiCaprio, he was apprehensive about portraying such a figure because it went against everything he stood for.
“It was this incredibly interesting horrific character,” DiCaprio said in an interview while commenting on the terrifying role. “I mean, there was absolutely nothing about this man I could identify with. I hated him and it was one of the most narcissistic, racist characters I’ve ever read in my entire life.”
When it came out, the film definitely received a lot of backlash from figures such as Spike Lee who criticised Tarantino for using racially charged language and claimed that the film was disrespectful. However, DiCaprio went ahead with his work because he was encouraged by his co-stars Samuel L Jackson and Jamie Foxx.
The actor added: “One of the pivotal moments for me was this initial read-through, I wondered if it needed to be this violent and this atrocious to other human beings and it was Sam and Jamie who said, ‘If you sugarcoat this, people are gonna resent the hell out of you. You got to push this guy to the outer extreme.’ That is what ignited me into going the way I did into the character.”
Tarantino was equally disgusted by his own creation. “I hated Candie and I normally like my villains no matter how bad they are. I could see his point of view, but I hated it so much. For the first time as a writer, I just fucking hated this guy,” he explained when speaking to Playboy about the movie.
The movie would go on to operate as one of Tarantino’s most divisive. DiCaprio’s portrayal of Candie was given due praise, with his blood-spilling scene perhaps one of the most committed portrayals of his life. However, the rest of the picture was significantly discredited, and Spike Lee accused it of glorifying slavery.
Still, DiCaprio’s performance, horrific character or not, is one of his best.
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