A modern acting great: Leonardo DiCaprio’s five most overlooked performances
The evolution from a child star into an actor with a long and successful career is a hurdle that’s tripped up countless names dating back to the dawn of the moving image, but it became clear very early on that Leonardo DiCaprio wasn’t going to become one of them.
Ever since his staggering performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape marked him out as a talent with limitless potential, he’s been repaying that faith in kind. First, he was the boyish newcomer with a bright future, then he became an international superstar before settling into his current and ongoing groove as one of his generation’s very best.
DiCaprio is famed for being incredibly selective over which roles he agrees to play, and considering six of his last seven movies have been nominated for ‘Best Picture’, he certainly knows how to choose them. It’s a reputation he’s worked hard to cultivate over the course of more than 30 years in front of the camera, but not every one of his top-tier turns has attained the recognition it deserved.
‘Overlooked’ isn’t a word that gets used in conjunction with DiCaprio very often when everyone knows he’s one of the modern greats, but the following five definitely fit the bill. They may not be his most famous or awards-laden performances, but they still stand comfortably alongside anything he’s ever done.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s five most overlooked performances:
5. Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008)
Through no fault of its own, James Cameron’s Titanic threatened to overshadow Revolutionary Road after the majority of the talk surrounding the period-set drama focused on the long-awaited reunion between DiCaprio and co-star Kate Winslet.
That was unfair when Sam Mendes’ literary adaptation existed at the complete opposite end of the cinematic spectrum, and while it was a modest critical and commercial success that landed the leading man on the Golden Globes shortlist for ‘Best Actor – Drama’, his aching performance didn’t get its due.
Understated and subtle, DiCaprio’s Frank Wheeler is a womaniser trapped in a crumbling marriage, but the beauty of the actor’s work is that he manages to generate sympathy where there really shouldn’t be any to find, dialling his star power right back to paint a portrait of authentic suburban malaise and the pitfalls of regret and self-repression.
4. Celebrity (Woody Allen, 1998)
Arriving in the middle of the potentially worrisome period where DiCaprio was in danger of being pigeonholed as a pretty-boy movie star by Titanic, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Beach, Celebrity allowed him to indulge his dark side to offer a refreshing change of pace.
The movie itself isn’t really up to much, but when DiCaprio saunters into Woody Allen’s borderline metafictional dramedy as Brandon Harrow, he immediately steals the spotlight of every scene that he’s in by weaponising his heartthrob baggage to disarming effect.
He was the fresh-faced A-lister who’d recently been catapulted towards superstar status in real life, and DiCaprio leans into the pitfalls that have blighted many who’ve been in similar positions by ultimately revealing Darrow to be a controlling, abusive, manipulative, and shallow asshole with a messiah complex he doesn’t want to be kept in check.
3. The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995)
Sharon Stone was so confident DiCaprio was the perfect choice to play The Kid in Sam Raimi’s gun-toting western that she paid for his salary out of her own pocket when the studio was reluctant to hire him for the part.
Light-hearted fare and comedic flourishes have hardly been synonymous with DiCaprio’s filmography, but it’s clear he’s having a blast in The Quick and the Dead, and the enthusiasm is infectious. Holding his own against some serious heavyweights, The Kid may not be the most complex character he’s ever played, but that doesn’t make him any less of a scene-stealer.
It took a while for The Quick and the Dead to catch on, but now that it’s firmly established as a cult classic and one of Raimi’s most underrated films, DiCaprio’s winning blend of youthful naivety and superficial overconfidence deserves to be remembered as one of his most light-hearted and underrated turns.
2. Marvin’s Room (Jerry Zaks, 1996)
Sandwiched in between Romeo + Juliet and Titanic in DiCaprio’s career release schedule, Marvin’s Room was the right movie at the right time, allowing the actor to showcase his dramatic chops on either side of the films that turned him from a promising star into a household name.
He may have already been an Oscar nominee at the time, but baptisms of fire don’t come much more daunting for actors with a point to prove than sharing an ensemble with Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, and Diane Keaton. Needless to say, he more than held his own against those screen legends.
Cast as a troubled teenager committed to a psychiatric institution for setting his mother’s house ablaze, those outward shows of defiance are merely a mask for a self-doubling, troubled, and traumatised kid struggling to make sense of his place in the world, a delicate balancing act DiCaprio pulls off with aplomb.
1. Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010)
History has shown that the bare minimum to be expected from any collaboration between DiCaprio and directorial muse Martin Scorsese is a very good movie, but Shutter Island has always felt like the outlier among their fruitful creative partnership.
It’s the only one of their six features together that wasn’t nominated for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ at the Oscars, and one of just two where DiCaprio wasn’t shortlisted for an Oscar or a Golden Globe. That might make it seem like a lesser work, however it’s anything but.
Shutter Island may be a genre film with shades of horror that relies heavily on a third-act twist, but the late-stage it wouldn’t mean a thing if it weren’t for DiCaprio being so compelling and convincing as the haunted, traumatised, wounded, conflicted, grief-stricken, and despairing Teddy Daniels.
