“A really upsetting dream”: Leonardo DiCaprio’s recurring nightmare over being cast as James Bond
At no point in his career has Leonardo DiCaprio even been mentioned in the same breath as James Bond, which apparently did nothing to prevent him from having a recurring nightmare where he was cast in the role.
Of all the strange things to dream about, that’s got to be up there. For one thing, he’s as disinterested in actually inheriting the mantle as the producers would be at hiring him for it, and since the purists refuse to even sanction the idea of an American 007, imagine how they’d react if it was DiCaprio?
He’s never really been in an action movie, either, although Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies come fairly close. At some point, almost every single one of Hollywood’s biggest stars will pick up a gun, shoot their way through a small army, and save the world from imminent destruction.
There aren’t many who’ve never ticked that box, and there aren’t any who’ve been as famous and successful for as long as DiCaprio and Tom Hanks who haven’t done it once. Maybe his dream had something to do with it, with the actor waking up in a state of panic after fantasising that he’d landed one of the most coveted jobs in cinema and fucked it up spectacularly.
As he explained in 1995, a time when he was still living with his mother despite being an Academy Award nominee, the soon-to-be superstar was repeatedly troubled by a dream where he’d signed on for a “video game version” of a standard 007 adventure, which involved him breaking into the White House to steal sensitive information, before avoiding incarceration by transforming into a baby.
He even bumped into Pierce Brosnan within the confines of his own mind, who chastised him for being “cheesy.” There are infinitely more troubling things a person could dream about, but at least he got away with it being imaginary, since there’s more than one official Bond who headlined a terrible entry in the franchise.
“That was a really upsetting dream,” he intoned. “It kinda shows how it is hard to deal with all this bullshit. People lie to you. Like, if they have the same sort of movie that’s been done before, an action movie, and you say you want something different, they say, ‘Well, he has a Black wife! How different can you get?'”
Another unexpected tangent, one that’s got nothing to do with 007, but nonetheless hints at one of the major reasons why DiCaprio has always been so avoidant of the action genre. 30 years ago, he didn’t think any of them stood out from an increasingly formulaic pack, whether they starred the most famous fictional secret agent of all time or not.
Hopefully, he’s not having the same dream anymore, even if there is something bleakly hilarious about a 50-something DiCaprio still waking up every morning, stricken by the fear that he was a shite James Bond inside his head.
