Leonardo DiCaprio names the movie he’s most fond of: “I remember every single detail”
Actors are obligated to say their most recent movie is the one they love the most because that’s what promotional duties and press tours are all about. Once the dust settles, they can give a genuine answer, though, with Leonardo DiCaprio viewing one of his first credits as a cherished personal moment.
There are plenty of films he could look back on as being pivotal to his growth as a performer over the years, and all for very different reasons. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape earned him his first Academy Award nomination, The Revenant finally landed him the big one, and Gangs of New York placed him into the orbit of Martin Scorsese for the first time.
Titanic became the highest-grossing release in cinema history and transformed him into a generational superstar, Django Unchained masterfully cast him against type in his first Quentin Tarantino collaboration, and even Critters 3 could feasibly hold a special place in his heart for being his feature-length debut.
His fondest flick is none of the above, however, but an early picture that came before he’d even made a name for himself as a precocious Oscar-nominated teenager. Literary adaptation This Boy’s Life was neither a box office smash hit nor an awards season darling, but DiCaprio still speaks about the film with almost hagiographic reverence.
“I was 15 years old, and I remember every single detail,” he told Time Out. “Everything was so new to me. Watching Robert De Niro on set, seeing his dedication, was one of the most influential experiences of my life.” Almost every young actor grows up idolising De Niro and his attention to detail, and they’d be part of the same ensemble again just three years later in 1996’s Marvin’s Room.
That would be the last time they’d work together for three decades, but there was always an air of inevitability surrounding the prospect of DiCaprio and De Niro sharing the screen in a Scorsese movie. It took a while to get there, but both of the director’s muses finally got that chance in Killers of the Flower Moon, a full 30 years after their first meeting.
This Boy’s Life finds DiCaprio and on-screen mother Ellen Barkin uprooting themselves to Washington, where they encounter De Niro’s well-to-do Dwight Hansen. Unfortunately, it’s all a façade, with his new stepfather inflicting damaging physical, verbal, and psychological abuse on the youngster’s Toby Wolff.
It can’t have been easy for any performer – never mind a 15-year-old in only their third film appearance – to go toe-to-toe with De Niro in so many emotionally-driven and evocative scenes, but it was an early sign this DiCaprio kid had something special about him, and it’s an experience he remembers vividly to this day.
