The director who “saved” Leonardo DiCaprio’s career
It’s never easy for actors to find their creative feet after suffering the reality of being typecast. Although it might be easy to see the range of someone like Robert Downey Jr in a film like Oppenheimer, there will always be those few fans that will always know him for his role as Tony Stark, even with the massive back catalogue he has with classics like Less Than Zero and Zodiac. While Leonardo DiCaprio was dangerously close to being typecast in a similar vein, a chance encounter with this film legend helped him see the other side of Hollywood.
When getting cast in his first roles, though, DiCaprio was quickly turning himself into the ultimate example of a teen heartthrob. First rising to prominence on television, DiCaprio’s starring role in James Cameron’s Titanic sealed the deal for him as one of the biggest crushes for many teenagers worldwide. Although DiCaprio liked the amount of success that Titanic garnered, he could also feel himself becoming limited in his roles.
Then again, DiCaprio had already shown audiences that he was capable of starring in roles that were far beyond the lovable persona of Jack. In movies like Basketball Diaries, audiences see the unsavoury side that DiCaprio could pull off, taking the seeds of his personality and channelling them into someone with no discernible moral code.
When talking about his need to break free from his usual roles, DiCaprio would say that he liked keeping a mystique about his career, telling The Guardian, “It’s a really obvious thing to say, but the more people know too much about who you really are, and it’s a fundamental thing, the more the mystery is taken away from the artist, and the harder it is for people to believe that person in a particular role”.
While DiCaprio may have had a lot more acting chops than he was given credit for, he knew that his idea of success was working alongside directors like Martin Scorsese. Compared to the fantastical elements of Titanic, Scorsese’s bold dramas were coated in a sense of realism unlike anything anyone had ever seen, with scenes that were uncharacteristically brutal for their time, like in Goodfellas and Taxi Driver.
Before he had even begun acting, DiCaprio knew that he would love the opportunity to work with someone of that calibre, telling Collider, “He had a way of immersing you in his filmmaking that just really stood out to me, as a young actor. I remember saying to myself, ‘Someday I want to do something that good.’ I want to be able to be in one scene of his films”.
After a tip from Robert De Niro, Scorsese would eventually see the range that DiCaprio had behind the camera before casting him in the film Gangs of New York. That magic chemistry between the actor and director would only continue for the next few years, letting DiCaprio take on as many off-the-wall roles as he could, whether in the crooked Mob industry in The Departed or the corrupt 1980s stockbroker in The Wolf of Wall Street.
While DiCaprio has since worked his magic with other industry giants like Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino, he credits Scorsese for helping him find his own voice as an actor, telling Deseret News, “He saved me. I was headed down a path of being one kind of actor, and he helped me become another one. The one I wanted to be.
