Leonardo DiCaprio is taller in person than he appears on screen, which is rare in a movie star.
He’s also broader, though not to say heavier or gym-rat pumped. But gone is the boyishness that turned “Titanic” into a tweener smash, that followed him through “Catch Me if You Can” and made Howard Hughes’ mental and physical dwindling believable in “The Aviator.”
In his A-list requisite baseball cap and shades, DiCaprio still could pass for a hipster agent, but there is something unexpectedly substantial about him.
And that, unlike his height, is very much evident on screen. In his two upcoming movies–“The Departed,” opening Friday, and “Blood Diamond,” in December–DiCaprio seems ready to accept the Big Star mantle that “Titanic” tried to thrust on him almost 10 years ago.
“There is always a moment in an actor’s life, in a man’s life, when he begins to own his size,” “Blood Diamond” director Ed Zwick says. “When you begin taking responsibility for your opportunities, admitting the depth of your ambition, coming into a stage of mastery. And that is what is happening here.”
Talking to the man himself, however, there is no indication of some supernova about to burst. DiCaprio, 31, still is gun-shy over the explosion of fame that followed “Titanic” and does little press. “I really feel the most important part of being an actor is to keep his personal life to himself,” he says. “The less I know about an actor’s daily activities, the less baggage I bring to his performance.”
Although he does arrive for an interview at L.A.’s Hotel Bel-Air with a stylist in tow, when he sits down to talk, he seems much more like the low-key local guy he professes to be than a star with $20-million-per status and a personal relationship with director Martin Scorsese.
“The Departed” is the third film the two have done together–after “Gangs of New York” and “The Aviator”–and the first contemporary story. “The Departed,” which burrows into the Boston underworld, is vintage Scorsese, rife with grit and gore. As a cop who infiltrates a mob run by Jack Nicholson, DiCaprio smashes gangsters in the head with beer mugs, holds fellow officers at gunpoint and goes mano a mano with Nicholson while trying to decipher the code of true loyalty.
Besides Nicholson, the high-profile cast includes Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Vera Farmiga and Alec Baldwin.
“OK,” DiCaprio admits with a laugh, “scheduling was a bit of an issue. And this is why I am not ready to be a director–this actor, that actor, the set, the lighting guy, the craft services. Trying to keep track of all that and keep the vision of the movie in your mind.” He shakes his head. “Maybe someday. Not yet.”
He had his hands full enough coping with the general anxiety that making a film generates and keeping up with Nicholson.
“We all sort of rolled with it,” he says. “With Nicholson you just have to play it the way he’s playing it. More than any other acting experience I’ve had, Nicholson throws curveballs.”
Not that he’s complaining; the strain he and Damon felt walking into a scene with Nicholson helped them build their characters.
“His character is losing his mind, basically, seeing his power diminish, taking chances he normally wouldn’t take,” DiCaprio says of Nicholson’s aging mob boss. “It helped us keep up the fear factor because both Matt and I had to maintain that this is a very scary, dangerous man, and you never know what you’re going to get.”
From Scorsese’s perspective, DiCaprio more than held his own.
“There is one scene he and Jack have where Leo has to prove he isn’t a rat, only, of course, he is,” the director says. “We shot it with double cameras, one on Leo, one on Jack, and basically it is one long take. Watching the two of them together, playing off each other was one of the best things I have seen, ever.”
DiCaprio is seeing a wider range of roles than he did five years ago, he says, but asked if he is still having fun, he grimaces.
“Fun? No, that wouldn’t be the word I’d use,” he says. “There is a satisfaction when you see what you’ve done and it’s good.”
And if it’s not?
“Well, what can I say? That is a bummer. Because while I don’t want anyone to cry me a river or anything, making a movie is very hard work,” he says. “But I’m not at a point in my life where fun is my priority. My No. 1 priority is to do this thing that I’ve been wanting to do for as long as I can remember, to take advantage of the opportunities that I have right now.”
