The cinematic collaboration Leonardo DiCaprio calls “mind-blowing”
Few movie lovers would disagree with the decision to put American actor Leonardo DiCaprio among the very best performers working in the contemporary industry. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix and Tilda Swinton, DiCaprio is one of cinema’s finest on-screen talents, collaborating with some of the industry’s greatest minds, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Christopher Nolan.
Rising to prominence in the 1990s, DiCaprio started the decade as a young unknown talent, taking minor roles in middling TV series such as Roseanne and Parenthood. Then, almost as if by luck, he began to rise up the ranks of the industry, taking a major role in This Boy’s Life alongside Robert De Niro, followed by an appearance opposite Johnny Depp in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Indeed, by 1996, he was already a promising talent, taking the lead role in Baz Luhrmann’s modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. One year later, and just six years after his feature film debut, DiCaprio would appear in the film that would catapult him to international fame, appearing in Cameron’s epic love story Titanic, a box-office record breaker that turned into a global phenomenon.
Nowadays, he’s rightfully seen as a cinematic icon, but this has only come through years of significant collaborations that proved to be integral to his own progression in the industry. After working with De Niro in This Boy’s Life, he went on to appear opposite Meryl Streep in Marvin’s Room, John Malkovich in The Man in the Iron Mask, as well as Daniel Day-Lewis in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.
Yet, none compare to the collaboration he witnessed between De Niro and Scorsese across the course of decades of cinema history. A partnership that gave him invaluable insight into the art of performance, DiCaprio once said of his collaboration with De Niro in an interview with TimeOut: “I was 15 years old, and I remember every single detail. 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”.
In a separate interview with Variety, DiCaprio added: “He is my favourite actor of all time, he really is. That relationship with him and Scorsese just influenced every one of my friends in the industry that I’ve met through the years…That is sort of the golden relationship of cinema to me. I mean, it just gets no better than that. That run of films that they did together is just…I can’t even talk about it, it’s that mind-blowing”.
Take a look at DiCaprio and De Niro acting side-by-side in a clip from This Boy’s Life below.
