Martin Scorsese on the joy of working with Leonardo DiCaprio: “He’s a natural film actor”
Leonardo DiCaprio will once again team up with director Martin Scorsese to feature in his next film, Killers of the Flower Moon. DiCaprio has, of course, performed in several Scorsese movies over the years, including The Wolf of Wall Street and The Aviator.
In a recent interview between Scorsese and Deadline, the iconic film director opened up on the joys of working with someone like DiCaprio, calling him a “natural film actor”.
“What’s great about Leo, and it’s why we work together so often, is he goes there. He goes to these weird places that are so difficult and convoluted, and through the convolution, somehow there’s a clarity that we reach,” Scorsese said.
He continued: “And usually it’s in the expression, in his face, in his eyes. I’ve always told him this. He’s a natural film actor. I could shoot a close-up of him, he could be thinking of nothing, and I could intercut anything with it, and people will say, ‘Oh, he’s reacting to such and such’. It’s the Kuleshov experiment. You could do that with him”.
Scorsese didn’t stop there, though, and he continued to lavish praise on one of his most frequent collaborators. “There’s something in his face that the camera locks into, in his eyes,” the director added. “The slightest movement, we know it. Thelma [Schoonmaker], editing his footage with me over the years, often goes, ‘Look at this. Look at the eye movement here. I think we should keep it.’ It’s very interesting what goes on behind the eyes. It’s all there.”
Killers of the Flower Moon will be released on October 6th, 2023.
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