The most intense director Leonardo DiCaprio ever worked with: “Completely unlike anything”
Leonardo DiCaprio has worked with an embarrassingly high number of great directors. One of his earliest film roles was in Sam Raimi’s cult favourite western, The Quick and the Dead. He has since gone on to become a favourite of Martin Scorsese, rivalling Robert De Niro as the auteur’s preferred collaborator. Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, the list goes on and on.
In 2008, Leo added another top name to his list. Alongside Russell Crowe, he starred in the CIA thriller Body of Lies, directed by none other than Sir Ridley Scott. DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris—a dubious name for an action hero—a CIA officer tracking the movements of a wanted terrorist in Jordan. According to the man himself, working with Scott was a highly memorable experience.
“Ridley’s style is completely unlike anything I’ve ever done,” DiCaprio told GQ while promoting the film. “He’s able to see the film in his eyes; he’s able to edit in his mind while watching seven monitors. And he likes to just throw you into the elements and see what you do. Then he’ll come in and say, ‘Here’s what to change.’”
He recalled a moment on the set of Body of Lies that demonstrated just how wild Scott’s imagination could be. “I’m in the middle of the desert, and I’ve got a gun on someone in some cave, and I’ll hear from an assistant director, ‘We just got word that Ridley wants a 747 flying above you right now. It’s just going to be a couple of seconds. It’s on standby; it’s swirling around, waiting right now,’” DiCaprio recalled.
The actor added: “There’s this intense group of people working twenty-four hours a day, giving Ridley what he wants, and Ridley wants certain things at certain times. It was a badass film to be a part of.”
The movie was written by William Monahan, who was fresh off the success of penning the screenplay for The Departed. Scott wanted to film the movie in Dubai, but owing to the political nature of the script, the United Arab Emirates denied his request. Scenes were filmed in Morocco instead. The shoot lasted nine long weeks, with filming switching behind custom-built sets in a basketball stadium and the nearby desert. Scott’s random requests only made things more stressful, with DiCaprio calling the film a major adrenaline rush.
Body of Lies wasn’t the only intense shoot of Leo’s life. “It reminded me of a Titanic experience,” he explained. “Jim Cameron would say, ‘Okay, we need to flood the top two floors, and I want a giant wave, and I want 400 extras jumping out the window while that happens.’ And I thought, ‘Cool’. And someone would say, ‘We’ll have that for you in twenty minutes.’ And I thought, ‘What? That level of organization’ – I just don’t have that type of brain.”
Given some of the insane things DiCaprio has done on-screen – he’s nearly died a couple of times while making movies – it’s mad that this one is the one that stands out as the most intense. Scott is a one-of-a-kind filmmaker known for his scope and determination. He’s still regularly churning out films to this day, even as he draws closer to his 90th birthday. Perhaps Leo shouldn’t have been that surprised that this was the man to push him to his limits.
