The “unattainable goal” that drives Leonardo DiCaprio: “I don’t know if I will ever”
If you were a doom-scroller during the golden age of social media, AKA 2016, you probably remember the memes about Leonardo DiCaprio having never won an Oscar.
At the time, people couldn’t believe that many of his peers had won one of the coveted awards but not him, with many citing some of his best work to date and asking themselves why he had yet to receive the long-overdue honour. After all, until that point, DiCaprio had delivered some exceptional performances, from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape to Shutter Island.
And yet, his first-ever Oscar win only happened in 2016, for his lead role as Hugh Glass in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant. “RIP Leo’s Oscars meme,” one person wrote on social media. Suffice it to say that when it comes to so-called “unattainable goals” for the actor, that one was finally boxed off, even though he’d eventually gotten to a point where he’d left it in the hands of fate, and did what most actors do when working on a new project, almost putting it out of mind completely.
“It’s never ever what I’m thinking about when I’m making movies,” he once said. “There’s nothing I’ve done for the specific reason of getting an award. Every single time, you just go in there trying to bat a thousand, trying to give it your all.” Elsewhere, he said he “wouldn’t be human” if he didn’t think about winning such awards, as it’s only natural to want recognition for performances that you put your all into.
That said, when it comes to other goals he seeks, the ones that go beyond tangible awards of recognition that make his job worthwhile and validate everything else that comes with it, DiCaprio looks for something else entirely. In his view, achieving the ultimate goal has more to do with making his magnum opus, in every sense of the word.
“With every role that I’ve chosen or every movie I’ve been a part of, I always think about the unbelievable accomplishments of actors and directors in the past and how many great performances have been given, and how many great films there have been in cinema’s history. And I have a great amount of respect for that,” he told Back Stage in 2012, during promo for Clint Eastwood’s J Edgar.
“I suppose my endless, unattainable goal is to do something that is as good as I see in cinema’s past,” DiCapro continued. “And I don’t know if I will ever, on a personal level, believe that I have accomplished that. I don’t know if I’ll ever sit here and see a film and say, ‘This is absolutely everything I ever dreamed of on a personal or cinematic level.’ But that’s what sort of drives me.”
Since then, it’s hard to say whether or not DiCaprio has actually achieved his goal. After all, he’s appeared in a number of films that will likely still be discussed for years to come, including The Great Gatsby, The Wolf of Wall Street, Killers of the Flower Moon and, of course, The Revenant. However, it’s also interesting to look at this from the audience’s perspective, especially as most people would argue that DiCaprio’s so-called cinematic pinnacle could be attached to many of his releases prior to his 2012 reflections, like Catch Me If You Can, The Beach, Romeo + Juliet, The Aviator – hell, even Titanic.
DiCaprio probably won’t ever come close to feeling that way about his own craft, though, especially considering that most actors don’t, and usually not ones who have been in the game for as long as DiCaprio. And when you idolise and romanticise past cinema in the way that he does, viewing it as the ultimate golden era, nothing he ever does will likely contain the same level of magic.
