The co-star who refused to speak to Leonardo DiCaprio: “I don’t think I said another word to him”
In terms of co-stars, Leonardo DiCaprio has racked up a list that would put most other A-listers to shame. Even if you just look at the movies he’s done with Martin Scorsese, the people he has worked with rank amongst some of the biggest stars of all time. Matthew McConaughey and Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street; Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley in Shutter Island; Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro in Killers of the Flower Moon. Those are names that are hard to argue with.
The first film that the two worked together on was 2002’s Gangs of New York. Set in the mid-1800s, the story follows a fierce rivalry between two groups of Irish immigrants with opposing religious views. Their lives are disrupted with the breakout of the Civil War. Alongside DiCaprio, the film also features performances from Cameron Diaz, John C Reilly, Liam Neeson, and Daniel Day-Lewis as ‘Bill the Butcher’, head of the Protestant gang.
DiCaprio plays ‘Amsterdam’ Vallon, a young man whose father was killed by Bill. He was very excited at the prospect of working alongside not only Scorsese but also an actor as legendary as his on-screen nemesis. “It was like two days before we started shooting, and you know, we’d been saying, ‘Hi Daniel,’ ‘Hi Marty,’ ‘Good morning,’ stuff like that,” DiCaprio recalled (via Showbiz Cheat Sheet). “I said, ‘Morning Daniel,’ and he went, [grunts]. I said, ‘Oh shit,’ game on.’”
Ever the method actor, Day-Lewis took his role as a brutal gangster incredibly seriously, especially when it came to dealing with his youthful rival. “I don’t think I said another word to him the nine months that we were there,” DiCaprio continued. “He was ‘Bill the Butcher,’ and that was it. It was only until the last day of reshoots that we kind of looked at each other and laughed, you know, and like, cracked a smile.”
Day-Lewis, who was nominated for a ‘Best Actor’ Oscar for playing the Butcher, is notorious for disappearing into his roles. Whilst playing cerebral palsy sufferer Christy Brown in My Left Foot, he stayed in character the entire time, requiring the crew to push him around in a wheelchair and even feed him as if he were actually disabled. He also reportedly disturbed his original There Will Be Blood co-star Kel O’Neill so much that he quit the movie, being replaced by Paul Dano. Both parties have denied this story.
It’s not like Leo hasn’t also gone method in the past. For The Revenant, he lived like a frontiersman for the entire shoot, sleeping inside animal carcasses and consuming raw flesh for his meals. “I think that his level of commitment is just so absolute,” the Titanic star said in support of Day-Lewis. “He goes home in character. … To a certain degree, I’m sure he has to kiss his child and his wife and go to bed, but that kind of level of commitment was inspiring again for me.”
The Method has been a controversial topic ever since it became widespread in Hollywood. For some, it’s an unnecessary complication and an excuse for overpaid actors to make themselves feel important. However, when you look at what DiCaprio and Day-Lewis have achieved, it’s hard to argue with those sorts of results.
