Jeremy Miller on working with Leonardo DiCaprio: “It bothered me a little”
Having spent decades plying his trade and becoming one of his generation’s top talents into the bargain, Leonardo DiCaprio has long since reached a place where any actor would relish the opportunity to share the screen with him.
With over 30 years in the business and a masterfully navigated evolution from a prodigiously talented child star to an established veteran, DiCaprio has maintained his star power by being very selective about which roles he chooses to play.
Obviously, that wasn’t the case when he was first starting out and looking to get his foot in the door as a young upstart, but one of his first major gigs ended up ruffling the feathers of a co-star. DiCaprio had already appeared in multiple episodes of The New Lassie, Santa Barbara, and Roseanne, but his 23-episode stint on the popular sitcom Growing Pains was his lengthiest small screen run to date at the time.
When he boarded the ensemble, the show was already six seasons deep, and having been part of the roster since the very beginning, Jeremy Miller wasn’t entirely sold on the latest addition. He was less than two years younger than DiCaprio, too, which may have fostered his lingering resentment of the newcomer.
“There was a little bit of competition there,” Miller admitted, according to The Huffington Post. “It bothered me a little that the network felt necessary to bring him in rather than focusing on my character, who had grown up and could now take over for Mike as the rapscallion. That was a little weird.”
DiCaprio’s Luke Bower was a homeless teenager taken in by the central Seaver family in what turned out to be the final season of Growing Pains before its cancellation. Not that the two became mortal enemies, with Miller calling them “good friends on set” who “got along great,” even if he wasn’t best pleased that he’d dedicated so many years of his youth to the series only to be shunted to the side-lines when a fresh injection of talent was needed.
The year after Growing Pains ended, DiCaprio landed his first Academy Award nomination when What’s Eating Gilbert Grape saw him shortlisted for ‘Best Supporting Actor’. Not only that, but it still marks the last time he appeared in any TV series as an actor, with his silver screen career taking off on the back of his breakthrough performance and leading to the bright lights and longevity of Hollywood stardom.
There are no sour grapes on Miller’s part, at least, especially when he couldn’t have been able to predict how DiCaprio would end up as one of the most famous faces on the planet half a decade after Growing Pains ended when James Cameron’s Titanic annihilated box office records.
