How Jack Nicholson gave Leonardo DiCaprio one of “the most memorable moments” of his career
Martin Scorsese’s 2006 outing The Departed is one of the ultimate crime thrillers. The screenplay is a twisting story that follows the concurrent stories of an undercover policeman in Boston’s Irish mob and a spy for the mob embedded in the police. A fascinating game of cat and mouse plays out, with the tension always at boiling point. Notably, the film boasts a stellar cast, with Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon in the lead roles, supported by Mark Wahlberg and Martin Sheen.
The tension contained in The Departed is particularly authentic because the director and cast actively sought to make it so. For Leonardo DiCaprio, this went to such a great extent that even he was put on edge by the “intense” Jack Nicholson, who was doing his bit to make his character, the mob boss Frank Costello, as terrifying as possible.
When speaking at the film’s press conference in 2006, DiCaprio explained: “There were a number of different scenes where I had no idea what was going to happen,” he said, per CheatSheet. “One scene in particular,we did the scene one way, and I remember Jack speaking to Marty because he said he didn’t feel that he was intimidating enough. It was one of the table scenes. It was one of the most memorable moments of my life as far as being an actor is concerned. I remember coming into the scene one way and then I came in the next day and the prop guy told me, ‘Well, be careful he’s got a fire extinguisher, a gun, some matches, and a bottle of whiskey.'”
Although deep down, he knew that Nicholson wasn’t actually going to kill him, he was still unsure of his maniacal co-star‘s intentions. He continued his story: “Some things are in the film that he did that day and some things aren’t. But, for me as an actor, it wasn’t necessarily [that] I’m afraid. We’re all professional actors and we’re all playing roles, but for me playing this character of this guy that has to relay to the audience this constant 24 hour panic attack that I’m going through for my life, surrounded by people that would literally blow my head off if I gave them any indication of who I was, coupled with the fact that I’m sitting across the table from a homicidal maniac that will maybe light me on fire.”
“It gives you, I don’t want to say as an actor a sense of fear, but as a character a whole new dynamic,” DiCaprio explained of the positive effects of Nicholson’s actions. “It completely altered and shifted the scene in a completely different direction. I think we all knew that if he came on board that he would have to sort of grab the reins with this character and let him be freeform and we all were completely sort of ready for that every day that we walked up on the set.”
“He had a short run, he filmed his scenes and then he left, but those were some of the most intense moments of the film for me certainly,” the actor concluded. “As a human being as a person, there were some memories that I will never forget.”
