biography of Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio

 (/diˈkæprioʊ, dɪ-/ ^ⓘ; Italian: [diˈkaːprjo]; born November 11, 1974) is an American actor and film producer. Known for his work in biographical and period films, he is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and three Golden Globe Awards. As of 2019, his films have grossed over $7.2 billion worldwide, and he has been placed eight times in annual rankings of the world's highest-paid actors.

Born in Los Angeles, DiCaprio began his career in the late 1980s by appearing in television commercials. He had a recurring role in the sitcom Parenthood (1990–1991), and had his first major film part as author Tobias Wolff in This Boy's Life (1993). He received critical acclaim and his first Academy Award nomination for playing a developmentally disabled boy in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993). DiCaprio achieved international stardom with the star-crossed romances Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997). After the latter became the highest-grossing film in the world at the time, he reduced his workload for a few years. In an attempt to shed his image of a romantic hero, DiCaprio sought roles in other genres, including the 2002 crime dramas Catch Me If You Can and Gangs of New York; the latter marked the first of his many successful collaborations with director Martin Scorsese.

DiCaprio continued to gain acclaim for his performances in the biopic The Aviator (2004), the political thriller Blood Diamond (2006), the crime drama The Departed (2006) and the romantic drama Revolutionary Road (2008). He later made environmental documentaries and starred in several high-profile directors' successful projects, including the action thriller Inception (2010), the western Django Unchained (2012), the biopic The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), the survival drama The Revenant (2015)—for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor—the comedy-dramas Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and Don't Look Up (2021), and the crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).

DiCaprio is the founder of Appian Way Productions—a production company that has made some of his films and the documentary series Greensburg (2008–2010)—and Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting environmental awareness. A United Nations Messenger of Peace, he regularly supports charitable causes. In 2005, he was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters for his contributions to the arts, and in 2016, he appeared in Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. DiCaprio was voted one of the 50 greatest actors of all time in a 2022 readers' poll by Empire.

DiCaprio was born on November 11, 1974, in Los Angeles, California. He is the only child of Irmelin Indenbirken, a legal secretary, and George DiCaprio, an underground comix artist and distributor. They met while attending college and moved to Los Angeles after graduating. Irmelin is German, and George is of Italian and German descent.  Irmelin's father, Wilhelm Indenbirken, was German,  and her mother, Helene Indenbirken, was a Russian immigrant living in Germany. Sources have falsely claimed that DiCaprio's maternal grandmother was born in Odesa, Ukraine; there is no evidence that he has any relatives of Ukrainian birth or heritage. 

DiCaprio's parents named him Leonardo because his pregnant mother first felt him kick while she was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Uffizi museum in Florence, Italy.  When he was one year old, DiCaprio's parents divorced after George fell in love with another woman and moved out.  To raise him together, DiCaprio's parents moved into twin cottages with a shared garden in Echo Park, Los Angeles. George lived with his girlfriend and her son, Adam Farrar, with whom DiCaprio developed a close bond. DiCaprio and his mother later moved to other neighborhoods, such as Los Feliz. He has described his parents as "bohemian in every sense of the word" and as "the people I trust the most in the world".  DiCaprio has mentioned growing up poor in a neighborhood plagued with prostitution, crime and violence. He was raised Catholic. 

Attending the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies for four years and later Seeds Elementary School, he later enrolled at John Marshall High School. DiCaprio disliked public school and wanted to audition for acting jobs instead. He dropped out of high school later, eventually earning a general equivalency diploma. 

As a child, DiCaprio wanted to become either a marine biologist or an actor. He eventually favored the latter; he liked impersonating characters and imitating people, and enjoyed seeing their reactions to his acting. According to DiCaprio, his interest in performing began at the age of two when he went onto the stage at a performance festival and danced spontaneously to a positive response from the crowd.  He was also motivated to learn acting when Farrar's appearance in a television commercial earned him $50,000.  DiCaprio has said in interviews that his first television appearance was in the children's series Romper Room, and that he was dismissed from the show for being disruptive. The show's host has denied that any children were removed from the show in this way When he was 11, he almost quit acting in order to pursue breakdancing, having gotten second place in a competition in his mother's native Germany. At 14, he began appearing in several commercials for Matchbox cars, which he calls his first role. DiCaprio later appeared in commercials for Kraft Singles, Bubble Yum and Apple Jacks.  In 1989, he played the role of Glen in two episodes of the television show The New Lassie. 

At the beginning of his career, DiCaprio had difficulty finding an agent. When he found one, the agent suggested DiCaprio change his name to Lenny Williams to appeal to American audiences, which he declined to do. DiCaprio remained jobless for a year and a half, although he had 100 auditions. Following this lack of success, DiCaprio was going to give up acting but his father persuaded him to persevere. Motivated by his father and by the prospect of financial security, he continued to audition. After a talent agent, who knew his mother's friend, recommended him to casting directors, DiCaprio secured roles in about 20 commercials.

By the early 1990s, DiCaprio began acting regularly on television, starting with a role in the pilot of The Outsiders (1990) and one episode of the soap opera Santa Barbara (1990), in which he played a teenage alcoholic DiCaprio's career prospects improved when he was cast in Parenthood, a series based on the 1989 comedy film of the same name. To prepare for the role of Garry Buckman, a troubled teenager, he analyzed Joaquin Phoenix's performance in the original film. His work that year earned him two nominations at the 12th Youth in Film Awards—Best Young Actor in a Daytime Series for Santa Barbara and Best Young Actor Starring in a New Television Series for Parenthood.  Around this time, he was a contestant on the children's game show Fun House, on which he performed several stunts, including catching the fish inside a small pool using only his teeth.

MINI BIO :

Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s, as the hunky lead actor in movies such as Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997), to then become a leading man in Hollywood blockbusters, made by internationally renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Irmelin DiCaprio (née Indenbirken) and former comic book artist George DiCaprio. His father is of Italian and German descent, and his mother, who is German-born, is of German, Ukrainian and Russian ancestry. His middle name, "Wilhelm", was his maternal grandfather's first name. Leonardo's father had achieved minor status as an artist and distributor of cult comic book titles, and was even depicted in several issues of American Splendor, the cult semi-autobiographical comic book series by the late 'Harvey Pekar', a friend of George's. Leonardo's performance skills became obvious to his parents early on, and after signing him up with a talent agent who wanted Leonardo to perform under the stage name "Lenny Williams", DiCaprio began appearing on a number of television commercials and educational programs.

DiCaprio began attracting the attention of producers, who cast him in small roles in a number of television series, such as Roseanne (1988) and The New Lassie (1989), but it wasn't until 1991 that DiCaprio made his film debut in Critters 3 (1991), a low-budget horror movie. While Critters 3 (1991) did little to help showcase DiCaprio's acting abilities, it did help him develop his show-reel, and attract the attention of the people behind the hit sitcom Growing Pains (1985), in which Leonardo was cast in the "Cousin Oliver" role of a young homeless boy who moves in with the Seavers. While DiCaprio's stint on Growing Pains (1985) was very short, as the sitcom was axed the year after he joined, it helped bring DiCaprio into the public's attention and, after the sitcom ended, DiCaprio began auditioning for roles in which he would get the chance to prove his acting chops.

Leonardo took up a diverse range of roles in the early 1990s, including a mentally challenged youth in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), a young gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead (1995) and a drug addict in one of his most challenging roles to date, Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries (1995), a role which the late River Phoenix originally expressed interest in. While these diverse roles helped establish Leonardo's reputation as an actor, it wasn't until his role as Romeo Montague in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) that Leonardo became a household name, a true movie star. The following year, DiCaprio starred in another movie about doomed lovers, Titanic (1997), which went on to beat all box office records held before then, as, at the time, Titanic (1997) became the highest grossing movie of all time, and cemented DiCaprio's reputation as a teen heartthrob. Following his work on Titanic (1997), DiCaprio kept a low profile for a number of years, with roles in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and the low-budget The Beach (2000) being some of his few notable roles during this period.

In 2002, he burst back into screens throughout the world with leading roles in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Gangs of New York (2002), his first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorsese. With a current salary of $20 million a movie, DiCaprio is now one of the biggest movie stars in the world. However, he has not limited his professional career to just acting in movies, as DiCaprio is a committed environmentalist, who is actively involved in many environmental causes, and his commitment to this issue led to his involvement in The 11th Hour, a documentary movie about the state of the natural environment. As someone who has gone from small roles in television commercials to one of the most respected actors in the world, DiCaprio has had one of the most diverse careers in cinema. DiCaprio continued to defy conventions about the types of roles he would accept, and with his career now seeing him leading all-star casts in action thrillers such as The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), DiCaprio continues to wow audiences by refusing to conform to any cliché about actors.

In 2012, he played a mustache twirling villain in Django Unchained (2012), and then tragic literary character Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013) and Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

DiCaprio is passionate about environmental and humanitarian causes, having donated $1,000,000 to earthquake relief efforts in 2010, the same year he contributed $1,000,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

DiCaprio is agnostic.  His personal life is the subject of widespread media attention. He rarely grants interviews and is reluctant to discuss his private life. 

Throughout his 40s, DiCaprio had been the focus of various reports detailing his involvement with women aged 25 or younger, and had faced criticism for the age disparity of those relationships.  In 1999, DiCaprio met Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen, whom he dated until 2005. He was romantically involved with Israeli model Bar Refaeli from 2005 to 2011. He later dated German fashion model Toni Garrn from 2013 to 2014 and later in 2017. DiCaprio was briefly romantically linked with Barbadian singer Rihanna, with the pair attending Coachella together in 2016 DiCaprio successfully sued French tabloid Oops  [fr] after it made claims that DiCaprio had gotten Rihanna pregnant. DiCaprio was in a relationship with American model and actress Camila Morrone from 2017 until 2022. He has been dating Italian model Vittoria Ceretti since August 2023. 

DiCaprio owns houses in Los Angeles and apartments in New York City.  In 2009, he bought an island, Blackadore Caye, off mainland Belize—on which he is set to open an environmentally friendly resor and in 2014, he purchased the original Dinah Shore residence designed by architect Donald Wexler in Palm Springs, California 

In 2005, DiCaprio's face was severely injured when model Aretha Wilson hit him over the head with a broken bottle at a Hollywood party. As a result, he required seventeen stitches to his face and neck.  Wilson pleaded guilty to the assault and was sentenced in 2010 to two years in prison. 

In 2017, when The Wolf of Wall Street producer Red Granite Pictures was involved in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal, DiCaprio turned over the gifts he received from business associates at the production company, including from fugitive businessman Jho Low, to the US governmen These included a Best Actor Oscar trophy won by Marlon Brando, a $3.2 million Pablo Picasso painting, and a $9 million Jean-Michel Basquiat collage. 

According to the online portal Box Office Mojo and the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, DiCaprio's most critically and commercially successful films include What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Titanic (1997), Catch Me If You Can (2002), Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Blood Diamond (2006), Shutter Island (2010), Inception (2010), Django Unchained (2012), The Great Gatsby (2013), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), The Revenant (2015), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), Don't Look Up (2021), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). His films have grossed $7.2 billion worldwide. 

DiCaprio has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following 

• 66th Academy Awards (1994): Best Supporting Actor, nomination, for What's Eating Gilbert Grape
• 77th Academy Awards (2005): Best Actor, nomination, for The Aviator
• 79th Academy Awards (2007): Best Actor, nomination, for Blood Diamond
• 86th Academy Awards (2014): Best Picture and Best Actor, nominations, for The Wolf of Wall Street
• 88th Academy Awards (2016): Best Actor, win, for The Revenant
• 92nd Academy Awards (2020): Best Actor, nomination, for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

DiCaprio has won three Golden Globe Awards: Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for The Aviator and The Revenant and Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for The Wolf of Wall Street, Tas well as a BAFTA Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor for The Revenant.

TRIVIA : 

• Bought Kate Winslet an inscribed gold ring, after they finished filming Revolutionary Road (2008) together. However, Winslet keeps the inscription a secret.
• DiCaprio, along with Kate Winslet and director James Cameron, publicly pledged to support the financial future of the last living Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, after it was reported that she had been forced to sell her mementos to pay for nursing home bills.
• Is named after Leonardo Da Vinci because he first kicked in his mother's womb when she saw Leonardo Da Vinci's artwork at the Uffizi Gallery, his artist father felt it was apt. His paternal grandfather's middle name happens to be Leon.
• Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson are his favorite actors.
• (December 26, 2012) Attended Kate Winslet and Ned Rocknroll's wedding in a private ceremony in New York. He also gave the bride away.
• He once said that playing Arnie in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) was "the most fun I've ever had".
• Was initially cast as "Patrick Bateman" in American Psycho (2000) - for which he was reputedly offered over $20 million - but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Christian Bale took the role instead.
• At age 10, his agent advised him to change his name to a more American-friendly Lenny Williams. Needless to say, he did not follow that advice.
• Kate Winslet considers him the best actor of his generation.
• (December 23, 2004) Mentioned in an interview with Katie Couric that while filming The Aviator (2004), it brought back his own obsessive-compulsive disorder that he had as a child.
• In January 1999, his lawyers filed an application to allow DiCaprio to copyright his own name.
• He purchased a 104-acre island off the coast of Belize in 2005 and plans to develop a resort with renewable energy sources. Purchase price for the island, Blackadore Caye, was estimated to be $1.75 million.
• Childhood friends with Tobey Maguire and the late Christopher Pettiet.
• In March 1998, he sued Playgirl magazine over plans to publish pictures -- including full frontal nudity -- of himself.
• Outbid Paris Hilton at a Cannes charity auction for a Chanel handbag, which he gave to his mother.
• Quentin Tarantino considered casting Leo as SS Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009), but he eventually chose Christoph Waltz to play the role instead.
• In his childhood, he and his mother lived in poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles which he describes as "Ghettos of Hollywood".
• Has worked with numerous acclaimed directors: Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Sam Mendes, Danny Boyle, Lasse Hallström, Baz Luhrmann, Sam Raimi, and Edward Zwick.
• Martin Scorsese is his favorite director.
• In 2006 in "The Independent", he named his ten favorite movies as: Bicycle Thieves (1948), Taxi Driver (1976), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), 8½ (1963), The Third Man (1949), Yojimbo (1961), Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Shining (1980) and East of Eden (1955).
• In 1994, he became the seventh youngest actor ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at age 19. He was nominated for his performance in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).
• Has said his two favorite performances are Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976) and James Dean's Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955).
• Was considering starring in a movie about actor James Dean, but turned down the role because he felt he wasn't experienced enough to do the film.
• Voluntarily surrendered several works of art worth millions of dollars and an Oscar statuette that once belonged to Marlon Brando to the U.S. Government, as part of its ongoing investigation into a money laundering operation connected to Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak.
• Is an avid beekeeper.
• As of 2016, Leo has been nominated for 38 different awards (6 Academy Awards, 4 BAFTA Awards, 11 Golden Globe Awards, 9 Screen Actors Guild Awards, 7 Critics' Choice Awards and 1 Emmy Award), but has only won 3 Golden Globes (the first was for The Aviator (2004) in 2005, the second for The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) in 2014 and the third for The Revenant (2015) in 2016), 1 SAG Award (for The Revenant), 1 BAFTA award (for The Revenant) and 2 Critics' Choice awards (the first for The Wolf of Wall Street in 2014 and the second for The Revenant in 2016). He won his first Oscar for The Revenant on February 28, 2016, on his fifth acting nomination and 22 years after his first nomination for What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).
• Was considered for the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Spider-Man (2002), which went to Tobey Maguire.
• His favorite actress of all time is Meryl Streep.
• Filed police charges after being attacked with a bottle by a Canadian ex-model while leaving a private party. Although the wound was very close to his jugular vein, it was not expected to delay production on his latest movie.
• Campaigned for the role of John Dillinger in Public Enemies (2009), but Johnny Depp was cast in the role instead.
• He has appeared in eleven films that have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Titanic (1997), Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Inception (2010), Django Unchained (2012), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), The Revenant (2015), Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019), Don't Look Up (2021) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Titanic and The Departed won in the category.
• He is an environmental conservationist and often advocates and supports natural causes.
• Was offered the role of the porn star Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights (1997) at around the same time as he was offered his role in Titanic (1997). The Dirk Diggler role eventually went to Mark Wahlberg.
• Was considered for the role of Anakin Skywalker for Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), which went to Hayden Christensen.
• Very good friends with actresses Kate Winslet and Marion Cotillard and actors Tom Hardy and Vincent Gallo.
• After The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), took a 2 year hiatus from acting, citing exhaustion. His next film The Revenant (2015) was released more than two years after The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
• While being interviewed by Entertainment Tonight at the red carpet of the 2016 Golden Globes, he stated that his long-time friend Kate Winslet is his favorite actress in the industry and he would love to work with her again.
• Possibly the only actor to play a character in almost every decade spanning the last 165 years.
• Thanked by Blink-182 in the liner notes of their album "Enema of the State".
• His father, George DiCaprio, is of German and Italian ancestry and is an underground writer, editor and distributor of comic books. His mother, Irmelin DiCaprio, is of German and Russian ancestry and a former legal secretary.
• Perhaps one of the most outrageous on-camera introductions ever given to a person (celebrity or otherwise) was the one co-host Tina Fey bestowed on DiCaprio during the 2014 Golden Globes telecast when she asked the audience to give him the same type of warm welcome he's used to receiving from "supermodels' vaginas.".
• While attempting to travel to St. Petersburg, Russia to attend the International Tiger Conservation Forum as a guest of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), but he was held up not once, but twice by flights. The first, Delta Flight 30, which departed from JFK bound for Moscow, was forced to make an emergency landing back at JFK shortly after takeoff due to engine flame out and malfunction, later his replacement flight had to make an unscheduled landing in Helsinki, Finland to refuel due to strong winds over the Atlantic ocean that used up the plane's fuel. Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who hosted the event, acknowledged that a lesser man, "could have read it as a sign - that it was not worth going," but instead Leo, who's late grandparents were Russian, made it to the summit and gained Putin's respect. The summit's aim is to double wild tiger populations worldwide from 3,500 to 7,000 by 2022. While in St. Petersburg, DiCaprio committed $1 million to WWF for urgent tiger conservation efforts through his Fund at the California Community Foundation.
• When he was a child, his favorite films were Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), Watership Down (1978), and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
• As a board member with World Wildlife Fund (WWF), he has traveled to such places as Bhutan, Nepal and Russia.
• His first Oscar win in February 28, 2016 broke the internet and generated 440,000 Tweets per minute, making it the most-tweeted moment of an Oscars telecast ever, surpassing Ellen DeGeneres' selfie from the 2014 ceremony.
• Good friends with Lukas Haas, Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Connolly, Alan Thicke & David Blaine.
• Turned down the role of Max in Disney's Hocus Pocus (1993) in order to star in the indie flick What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).
• Auditioned for the role of Dick Grayson/Robin in Batman Forever (1995), which went to Chris O'Donnell.
• Owns a production company - Appian Way Productions.
• He and his family funded a state-of-the-art computer center at the Los Feliz branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, which was rebuilt after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
• In 2012, he was featured on Kate Winslet's book "The Golden Hat: Talking Back To Autism", with celebrity self-portraits to raise awareness and support for autism.
• Donated a substantial sum of money to the Australian Bushfire Appeal in 2020 and was one of the first celebrities to do so.
• His first publicity spot was about MILK.
• Won the role of Arthur Rimbaud in Total Eclipse (1995) after the death of actor River Phoenix in 1993.
• Celebrated his 37th birthday at New York City's Hotspot Avenue, which he rented out. Guests included pals Russell Simmons and Bradley Cooper, and Leo's mother Irmelin. The party raised money for DiCaprio's various wildlife protection projects and disaster relief for Haiti. Moreover, his movie J. Edgar (2011) was released to theaters in the United States and Canada on that same day.
• Attended Seeds Elementary School at UCLA where he took summer courses in performance art.
• By many publications such as Variety, The Economist, The Atlantic, he is said to be the last true American "movie star", because he has remained the most bankable actor while eschewing genres such as superhero films.
• Was cast in the title role for Baz Luhrmann's doomed "Alexander the Great" project.
• He stated in a Rolling Stone interview that in his younger years his mother took him to Germany about 10 times to visit his grandmother.
• DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Marion Cotillard, Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Daniel Brühl, Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams are the only actors to receive a Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA and Critics' Choice Award nomination for the same performance and then fail to be Oscar-nominated for it: for their performances in The Departed (2006), We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Rust and Bone (2012), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Captain Phillips (2013), Rush (2013), Nightcrawler (2014) and Arrival (2016), respectively.
• Has a Dutch song about him called "Ik ben verliefd op Leonardo DiCaprio/I'm in love with Leonardo DiCaprio" by Flemish girl band K3 (Kathleen Aerts, Karen Damen, and Kristel Verbeke).
• American representative at Tiger Conservation Efforts At Russia Summit. Donated $1.000.000 to preservation of Asian Tiger.
• When his camera went missing, he offered a substantial reward of many thousands of pounds for its return.
• Ranked #8 on Forbes list of Hollywood's Top Earning On-Screen Couples alongside Marion Cotillard in 2012. They are the only couple from a non-franchise film: Inception (2010), the film made $825 million at the global box-office.
• Turned down the role of Steve Jobs in Steve Jobs (2015). Michael Fassbender was cast instead.
• Ranked #75 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
• Bought a multi-million-dollar apartment, in Manhattan's Greenwich Village area, at 66 E. 11th Street.
• Donated a Banksy painting from his art collection for the amfAR Gala charity auction in Cannes, where it fetched $1 million. The painting was introduced by Marion Cotillard and Michael Fassbender. [May 21, 2015].
• Early in his career he appeared as a contestant on a game show called "Fun House" where stunts were performed - his involved trying to catch fish in a small pool with only his teeth.
• A 8-bit web-game titled "Leo's Red Carpet Rampage" was released in February 16, 2016 by British multimedia group The Line Animation. The game places a miniature animated Leonardo DiCaprio in a never-ending quest to reach the end of the red carpet where his Oscar awaits him. It featured a series of challenges involving DiCaprio's career: paparazzis, the iceberg that sinks Titanic (1997), the Quaalude overdose from The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), the bear from The Revenant (2015), his competitors for the Best Actor Oscar, write an acceptance speech, find the black nominee, etc. The game racked up 6,000 plays per minute two hours after the official launch and quickly spread around the world, inexplicably finding its largest audience in Russia.
• Won the 2010 'Do Something' Award for his Haiti relief efforts and the television show "Greensburg".
• Was trained by renowned Hollywood Gun Coach Thell Reed, who has also trained such actors as: Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, Edward Norton, Russell Crowe, Ben Foster and Girard Swan.
• Hosted the first gala for the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in Saint-Tropez, France on July 23, 2014. Over 500 guests attended the event, including Marion Cotillard, Jared Leto and Bono. The event raised $25 million to help protect animals and plants from extinction.
• Turned down Michael Pitt's role in The Dreamers (2003) because he felt he was too old to play a twenty-year-old student.
• (April 16, 1999) While filming The Beach (2000) off the coast of Thailand, Leonardo and others were swept off a camera boat by strong winds and waves. No one was injured.
• Purchased a unit in Manhattan's new, eco-friendly Riverhouse development in Battery Park, paying $3,665,700. Other real estate holdings include: A 1765-square-foot house on Carbon Beach in Malibu that he purchased in 1998 for $1.6 million. A 2633-square-foot house in the Malibu Colony that he purchased in 2002 for exactly $6 million. A 4551-square-foot house in the Bird Streets area of Los Angeles' Hollywood Hills that he bought in late 1999 for $2,515,000. A 3980-square-foot house in the Bird Streets area of Los Angeles' Hollywood Hills (next door to the one mentioned above) that he purchased in the summer of 2003 for $3,780,000. A two-bedroom, 2374-square-foot contemporary-style oceanfront house in Malibu, California that he paid $6.350 million for in 2007. And in Las Vegas, he spent $1.5 million for two adjacent two-bedroom units at Las Vegas's Panorama Towers in 2004.
• Openly supported John Kerry in the 2004 election. He went around 11 states and gave 20 speeches about the environment and how the Bush Administration has damaged it.
• Every time DiCaprio was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, one of his co-stars was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for the same movie (Alan Alda in The Aviator (2004), Djimon Hounsou in Blood Diamond (2006), Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Tom Hardy in The Revenant (2015)). Cate Blanchett is his only female co-star to be nominated (and win) an Oscar for a movie in which she co-starred with him, for her performance in The Aviator (2004), for which DiCaprio was nominated for Best Actor.
• DiCaprio and his Titanic (1997) and Revolutionary Road (2008) co-star (as well as close friend), Kate Winslet, have been nominated for Oscars in the same year three times: in 2005 for The Aviator (2004) (DiCaprio) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) (Winslet), in 2007 for Blood Diamond (2006) (DiCaprio) and Little Children (2006) (Winslet), and in 2016 for The Revenant (2015) (DiCaprio) and Steve Jobs (2015) (Winslet).
• Was rejected for the role of Hobie Buchannon on "Baywatch". In later years, DiCaprio considered this setback a blessing in disguise.
• He has appeared in one film that has been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Titanic (1997).
• Fans in Russia's Republic of Yakutia donated their jewelry to craft an Oscar of their own for the actor. DiCaprio has been invited to the Russian Far East to receive the so-called 'Yakutian Oscar'. Around 1.4 kilograms of silver were collected and melted to make the Yakutian Oscar.
• One of his first TV appearances was "Romper Room". He got himself ejected from the set for being disruptive.
• He and Jason Robards received Oscar-nominations for portraying Howard Hughes. Robards played Hughes in Melvin and Howard (1980) and Leonardo played him in The Aviator (2004)
• Rarely ever goes on talk shows except The Ellen Show.
• Was considered for the role of Roark Jr./ Yellow Bastard in Sin City (2005), which went to Nick Stahl.
• Has been in a relationship with Bar Refaeli twice. They began a relationship in December 2005, but separated in October 2007. However, they later reconciled in December 2007, only to separate again in May 2011.
• DiCaprio and his The Aviator (2004) co-star, Cate Blanchett, have been nominated for Oscars in the same year four times: in 2005 both of them were nominated for The Aviator; in 2007 for Blood Diamond (2006) (DiCaprio) and Notes on a Scandal (2006) (Blanchett); in 2014 for The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) (DiCaprio) and Blue Jasmine (2013) (Blanchett), and in 2016 for The Revenant (2015) (DiCaprio) and Carol (2015) (Blanchett). Blanchett won the Oscar in 2005 and 2014 and DiCaprio won in 2016.

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