Leonardo DiCaprio Height, Age, Girlfriend, Wife, Family, Biography & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Leonardo DiCaprio

• Leonardo DiCaprio is a popular American actor, producer, and environmentalist. The actor has won an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards and is counted among the world’s highest-paid actors.

• His father, George, a fourth-generation Italian-American, was a comic book artist who met DiCaprio’s German-born mother, Irmelin, while attending college in the early sixties in New York.

• After completing their graduation, Leonardo’s parents moved to Los Angeles, where the penniless pair ended up living in a run-down house, off Hollywood Boulevard, dubbed “syringe alley.”

• There is an interesting story behind his name. Reportedly, his pregnant mother was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Uffizi museum in Florence, Italy, when DiCaprio first kicked, and thus her mother named him after this great Italian polymath.
  

  Baby Leonardo DiCaprio and His Mother Irmelin

• When Leonardo was just two, his parents split after eight years of marriage. Although initially, they agreed to live next door to each other so that Leonardo could not feel the absence of his father, his mother, Irmelin, moved to multiple neighborhoods in Los Angeles such as Echo Park and Los Feliz while doing several jobs, working first as a childminder, and later as a legal secretary. She struggled to make ends meet.
  

  A Rare Childhood Photo of Leonardo DiCaprio

• Reportedly, Irmelin had also taken her husband to court to force him to pay just $16 a week for little Leo’s upkeep. ^[20]questia

• During Leo’s school holidays, Irmelin would send him to Germany to stay with Leo’s maternal grandparents in their tiny flats. There, he would go for cycling and mushroom-picking with his grandfather, away from the sordid and drug abuse problems of LA. While describing Leo’s stay in Germany, his maternal grandmother, Helene Indenbirken, once said,
  

  From the age of about eight, Leonardo spent all his vacations with us here in Germany. “He even got his first taste for the sea when his grandfather and I took him on a cruise. We went all over – to the Bahamas and Canada. We also took him skiing in Austria.”

• In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the actor talked about being “very poor” and said he had experienced life at both ends of the income spectrum. He revealed that he had spent the first nine years of his life in a run-down Hollywood neighborhood, and his own upbringing was poverty-stricken. He said,
  

  There was a major prostitution ring on my street corner, crime, and violence everywhere. It really was like ‘Taxi Driver’ in a lot of ways.” ^[21]Independent

• In his childhood, Leonardo hated attending public schools and would beg his mother to take him to auditions.

• While it came to his career choice, Leonardo had decided either to become a marine biologist or an actor and eventually becoming the latter.
  

  Leonardo DiCaprio in His Teenage

• Reportedly, it was a stage performance at the age of two, where he danced spontaneously and received a cheerful response from the crowd, which had sparked his interest in performing arts, and the fuel to the fire was added by his older step-brother who earned $50,000 for a television commercial, and it furthered Leo’s interest to become an actor.

• When he was a kid (five years old), he was kicked off the set of ‘Romper Room,’ a children’s show aimed at very young children that began in 1953 and lasted until 1994. While describing the situation in an interview, DiCaprio said,
  

  My mom got me on Romper Room when I was five — it was my favorite show. But they couldn’t control me. I would run up and smack the camera, and I’d jump around and do my little flips and routines. I wish I could get that tape now.”

• By the age of 14, Leonardo had appeared in several commercials for ‘Matchbox cars by Mattel,’ which he considers his first role, and later for ‘Kraft Foods,’ ‘Bubble Yum,’ and ‘Apple Jacks.’

• At the age of 10, an agent had advised him to change his name to something more familiar to Americans like Lenny Williams, which he refused.

• At the beginning of his career, even after 100 auditions, he remained jobless for more than a year, which had even led him to decide to quit acting. However, it was his father who encouraged him to never give up.

• By the early 1990s, Leonardo had become a regular face on television and appeared in popular shows like ‘The Outsiders’ (1990) and ‘Santa Barbara’ (1990). In the same year, he was cast in ‘Parenthood’ in which he essayed the character of a troubled teenager ‘Garry Buckman.’ In an interview, he said that to essay the character of Garry Buckman, he had analyzed Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in the original film.

• Before making his film debut in the low-budget horror direct-to-video film ‘Critters 3’ (1991), Leo had played an uncredited role in one episode of ‘Roseanne.’ However, he doesn’t like to remember his role in ‘Critters 3,’ which he describes as-
  

  

  Leonardo DiCaprio during the promotion of Critters 3

  possibly one of the worst films of all time. I guess it was a good example to look back and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

• In 1992, to play a supporting role in the film ‘This Boy’s Life,’ Robert De Niro allegedly hand-picked DiCaprio from hundreds of boys. ^[22]The Guardian
  

  Leonardo DiCaprio in This Boy’s Life (1993)

• In 1995, Leonardo starred alongside David Thewlis in Agnieszka Holland’s erotic drama ‘Total Eclipse;’ replacing River Phoenix, who had died before filming began.

• DiCaprio earned his first wide-spectrum fame in 1996 when he appeared opposite Claire Danes in Baz Luhrmann’s film ‘Romeo + Juliet,’ which also earned him a ‘Silver Bear for Best Actor’ at the 1997 Berlin International Film Festival. 

• To star alongside Kate Winslet in James Cameron’s ‘Titanic’ (1997), Leo refused an offer to do the film ‘Boogie Nights’ (1997).
  

  Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the Set of Titanic

• ‘Titanic’ went on to become a cult classic and earned DiCaprio the much-awaited stardom. The film transformed him into a superstar, and his ‘Titanic’ stardom became known as “Leo-Mania” among teenage girls and young women in general.
  

• Reportedly, Leo initially had doubts about playing the role of Jack in ‘Titanic.’ However, it was Cameron who encouraged him as he strongly believed in his acting skills.
  

  Leonardo DiCaprio and James Cameron on the Set of Titanic

• Although ‘Titanic’ won 11 Academy Awards, the most for any film, it failed to give a nomination to DiCaprio, resulting in a protest against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by more than 200 fans. The only award for ‘Titanic’ that Leonardo has earned is MTV Movie & TV Awards (1998).
  

• After ‘Titanic,’ Leonardo DiCaprio became a phenomenon. John Hiscock of The Daily Telegraph compared his popularity to that of the Beatles’ in the 1960s. 

• On the Titanic phenomenon, Leo stated in 2000-
  

  I have no connection with me during that whole Titanic phenomenon and what my face became around the world. I’ll never reach that state of popularity again, and I don’t expect to. It’s not something I’m going to try to achieve either.”

   

• In 1998, he was cast in American Psycho (2000) for a reported salary of $20 million, but he left the project and did a lead role in a low-budget ($50 million) film titled “The Beach.” Although “The Beach” collected three times more than its budget at the box office, it earned mostly negative reviews and also earned Leonardo a nomination for the ‘Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor.’
  

• In 2004, he launched his production company, ‘Appian Way Productions,’ which he named after an Italian road as he is connected to Italy through his father’s descent and is well conversant in Italian.

• Leonardo DiCaprio shares a great bond with Martin Scorsese who is considered one of the influential directors in film history. Many of Leonardo’s greatest performances have been delivered under the guidance of Martin Scorsese. The pair has given many blockbusters including ‘Gangs of New York’ (2002), ‘The Aviator’ (2004), ‘The Departed’ (2006), ‘Shutter Island’ (2010), and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013). On his collaboration with Martin Scorsese, DiCaprio says,
  

  As a young actor standing beside him during the creative process of making a movie, I discovered that just like a painting, a sculpture, music or theatre, film was just as essential, relevant, as a matter of fact, the most integral art form of our time. I felt I could truly own the term artist by working alongside him.”

  

  Leonardo DiCaprio with Martin Scorsese

• When he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for “The Revenant” in 2016, it was not a surprise to many as it was long-awaited because even after getting nominated three times before, for ‘The Aviator’ (2005), ‘Blood Diamond’ (2007), and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013), the award had always slipped from his grab.

• After playing the role of a fur trapper Hugh Glass in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s survival drama ‘The Revenant,’ Leo described it his most difficult film.
  

• After The Revenant, DiCaprio took a hiatus from acting, and for the next three years, he narrated documentaries like ‘The Ivory Game,’ ‘Before the Flood,’ and ‘Ice on Fire’ and produced films.

• After a break of four years, he returned to acting in 2019 with Quentin Tarantino’s comedy-drama ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.’

• Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the most identified environmentalists among celebrities and has become an iconic face in the climate change movement. For DiCaprio, the environment is more important than spirituality. To promote environmental awareness, he established the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 1998.
  

  Leonardo DiCaprio holding a placard on Climate Change

• While chairing the national Earth Day celebration in 2002, Leonardo interviewed Bill Clinton and discussed plans to deal with global warming.

•  In 2014, DiCaprio was appointed as a United Nations representative on climate change. He also made an opening statement to members of the UN Climate Summit in the same year.

• In 2016, DiCaprio met Pope Francis and discussed with him the issue of global warming and climate change and also gave him a charity donation.

• The major part of his acceptance speech at the 88th Academy Awards in 2016 covered the issue of climate change and environmentalism. In his speech, he said,
  

  Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this. For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed.”

• He is often spotted smoking and consuming alcoholic beverages on various occasions.
  

• In 2016, when asked why he loved acting, DiCaprio said,
  

  Life can get pretty monotonous. Acting is like living multiple lives. When you make a movie, you go off to different places, live different cultures, investigate somebody else’s reality, and you try to manifest that to the best of your ability. It is incredibly eye-opening. That’s why I love acting. There’s nothing as transformative as what a film, a documentary, can do to get people to care about something else besides their own lives.”