The only director left on Leonardo DiCaprio’s wish list: “There are a lot of people”
It seems as though Leonardo DiCaprio has worked with everyone under the sun, despite having avoided working with a female director his entire career. From an exhausting number of collaborations with Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, the actor has seemingly found his niche within a particularly boyish area of cinema, and while the likes of Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst are making an effort to use their power and level the playing field, this does not seem to be a concern of DiCaprio. Instead, he has been racking up his numbers with all the old farts in the industry and dating women old enough to be his daughter.
But alas, some things in Hollywood never change, and while people claim that things are so much better these days, the fact that the most powerful actor working today has not yet worked with a woman speaks volumes about the emptiness of this so-called progress.
However, DiCaprio continues to indulge in his personal fantasies with evidently no conscience about the inequalities in the industry that he contributes towards, with the actor describing the other men he would most like to work with, saying, “There are a lot of directors I’d still love to work with. I mean, there are a lot of people. There are many great directors out there”.
The actor first described his love for Paul Thomas Anderson, an obvious choice and a dream that has recently come true, with Anderson releasing the trailer for his next film, One Battle After Another. Starring alongside Alana Haim, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Regina Hall, the film follows the former member of a revolutionary group who works with other revolutionaries to find his missing daughter. It is said to be a more personal film from Anderson, a strand that has cropped up in his work after the creation of Licorice Pizza.
DiCaprio also described the power of Ang Lee, the Taiwanese director who is best known for his tender and achingly painful 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain, which became a huge marker in the careers of both Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. As well as this, he is also known for The Life of Pi, Sense and Sensibility and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with each film being vastly different in tone and style. The director’s last film was with Will Smith in 2019, so perhaps there is a chance he will embark on another project shortly and join forces with DiCaprio.
The actor is shortly set to be working with Martin Scorsese on his Hawaiian gangster epic alongside Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, as well as working with Damien Chazelle on his next project after the flop of Babylon. Some people will always stay set in their ways and keep doing what they’re doing, even if the times are changing around them.
DiCaprio seems like one of these people, and perhaps this will never change, with the actor seeming content with working with the usual heavyweights and ticking off each one in a fairly limited creation mission. He might be one of the best actors working today, but it feels a little predictable and tiring to see him staying within such a narrow lane, but who knows, maybe this will change one day.
