The most “atrocious” audition of Leonardo DiCaprio’s career: “It didn’t go too well”
Leonardo DiCaprio has many talents, but in an industry full of triple threats, his acting toolkit doesn’t necessarily tick all the boxes. Hollywood contains some of the most talented people in the world, with performers who can sing, dance and cry on command, shimmying their way to the top through pure skill.
Whether it be the breakout success of Margot Robbie, Rachel Zegler or Harris Dickinson, there are some people on the stage and screen with a disgusting amount of talent, leading them to the producer, director and actor chairs, simultaneously.
However, people like the ones mentioned above can make even the greatest actors look hideously untalented, with DiCaprio once auditioning for a role that required him to do a little more than just act, and it ended up being a bigger bite than he could chew.
Baz Luhrmann is one of the most colourful and individualistic directors of the 21st century, with a bold colour palette and mismatched style that blends both old and new. From the use of Jay-Z songs in a period film set in the roaring twenties to the use of guns in his version of Romeo + Juliet, the director has established a unique style in modern-day adaptations of classic stories.
However, while the director famously worked with DiCaprio for Romeo + Juliet in 1996, as well as in The Great Gatsby in 2013, the actor was almost a series regular in Luhrmann’s filmography after auditioning for the lead role in Moulin Rouge!
Moulin Rouge!, directed in 2001, is a love story that takes place in a Parisian nightclub, following the romance between a poet and the star of the club. While it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Ewan McGregor in the lead role, DiCaprio was only a possibility for a few minutes, with the actor auditioning by singing ‘Lean on Me’ with the director, and fluffing it so badly that he was immediately dropped as an option.
When discussing this, DiCaprio said, “To be honest, I’m not really prepared to do a musical, simply because I think I have a pretty atrocious voice. But we had a friendly thing where it was me and him and a piano player, and we tried to sing a song together. It didn’t go too well. I think it was ‘Lean on Me’, and when I hit the high note, he just turned to me, ‘Yes, D, I don’t know if this conversation should continue’.”
It might be a fairly jarring and embarrassing experience after having already worked with a director only to find you don’t meet the cut for their next project, but it just goes to show that you can be the master of one art but not possess the skills to dive into another.
It therefore comes as no surprise that DiCaprio hasn’t reprised a musical role since, rather smartly deciding to focus on his existing talents instead of trying to make something work that he doesn’t quite have the skills to do. He might be a Goat, but not even DiCaprio is good at everything.
