Tragic Details About Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio is undoubtedly one of Hollywood's golden boys. Amongst the likes of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, his striking good looks and talent as an actor have made him a fixture in Hollywood for decades. We've seen him sink to the depths of the sea in "Titanic," lead a team of fraudulent stock brokers to a federal indictment in "The Wolf of Wall Street," and battle a bear in "The Revenant," adding a new layer of depth to his resume each time he graces our movie screens.
DiCaprio is one of the most revered actors of his generation, snagging seven Oscar nominations and eventually taking home the win for best actor for his performance in "The Revenant." He also received 14 Golden Globe nods, winning three for his standout roles. The "Inception" star is one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. There's no question that his acting skills have shined over the four decades that he's been in the business, but so has his charming personality. DiCaprio is well-liked by many of his peers, and it isn't often he is embroiled in scandal or controversy.
Despite his booming success, the "Catch Me If You Can" star hasn't had an easy ride on the fame train. From near-death experiences to the grueling demands that acting has had on his life, he is no stranger to adversity. It's a good thing the actor is familiar with sinking ships because he's dealt with a few of his own (metaphorically speaking of course). We're breaking down the tragic details about Leonardo DiCaprio.
Leonardo DiCaprio was afraid to go out in his neighborhood alone growing up
Leonardo DiCaprio may have more money than he knows what to do with, but he was raised in a much simpler household. The Oscar winner grew up a stone's throw away from Hollywood, but his neighborhood sat on the rougher, poorer side of town. "It was bad news — I stayed home a lot," he revealed in a Rolling Stone interview. " ... You'd go to get a piece of candy, and there'd be a dude standing there with every drug you could possibly imagine in his trench coat. Then there were all the prostitutes coming out of the hotel."
DiCaprio learned to be tough at a young age, and he often started fights he couldn't finish. "I would talk back to anyone and be up for any fight, and when you tell a kid that's three years older than you to shove it, you're going to get your a** beat," DiCaprio admitted. The "Don't Look Up" actor's punk-like attitude surfaced after he was often overlooked because he was much smaller than his classmates. "I needed to be heard, and I was too little to get any respect," he explained.
His tough exterior may have gotten him in trouble on the playground, but DiCaprio admitted he had the utmost respect and admiration for his parents growing up. "They couldn't have been better parents," he said, adding that without them he would have never been able to survive Hollywood. "My parents gave me complete freedom. I had nothing to rebel against, so I didn't."
Leonardo DiCaprio's battle with anxiety
With loads of money, power, and influence at his disposal, it's not necessarily the big stuff that Leonardo DiCaprio worries about. When asked by a Rolling Stone interviewer what exactly bothers the actor during his day-to-day, he replied: "Really stupid stuff, things that shouldn't make you anxious whatsoever. It's crazy how your mind will become this database to make you worry about things that are so arbitrary." DiCaprio admits to being an organized person who thinks things through, but he seeks out therapy from time to time to maintain his mental health.
He releases a lot of his inner demons onscreen, and he's incredibly versatile in the roles he takes on. Whether it be playing characters in power positions that fall just as far as they have risen, old souls wise before their time, or dream chasers who often get caught up in their delusions, DiCaprio has tapped into his innermost feelings to bring his roles to life. "I obviously have that stuff within me, and it wasn't until I was pushed to do it at an early age that I realized that I could," he explained. "It's a release — being able to enact those moments is a form of therapy."
Despite his ups and downs with his anxiety, DiCaprio has found a way to appreciate the obstacles in life. " ... I feel like I'm a pretty levelheaded person that has remained happy, and not let my shortcomings overtake the better part of me. I'm fulfilling the things I wanted to fulfill, and I'm still sane," he admitted.
Leonardo DiCaprio's oxygen ran out on a diving excursion
Before he could battle a bear onscreen in "The Revenant," Leonardo DiCaprio was facing a very real-life battle for air during a diving excursion nearly a decade earlier. The actor had a scary experience while visiting the Galapagos Islands for an expedition alongside Fisher Stevens, who directed DiCaprio's climate change documentary "Before The Flood." The film follows him around the world as he has candid conversations with the likes of top-level experts, NASA scientists, and former President Obama about the state of the world and the effect of human impact on our natural resources. To gather information for the film, the "Gatsby" star joined Stevens and oceanographer Sylvia Earle for a scuba dive that later went off the rails.
"I was filming Sylvia and I had this little easy camera to shoot underwater, and [Leonardo] was Sylvia's diving buddy, so I said, 'Would you film Sylvia?' And he said, 'Yeah I love it man, I love it,'" Stevens told GQ. After 20 minutes surrounded by hundreds of eagle rays, Stevens recalls losing track of DiCaprio and the rest of the group. "Then, I see Leo buddy breathing [a rescue technique], because Leo's tank was leaking oxygen, and Edward had to save him!" the Oscar-winning director remembered. "It was pretty crazy. But he actually did get some film for me and it was good for a second and then it got pretty shaky when he couldn't breathe. But we really bonded on that trip."
Leonardo DiCaprio had a near-death accident while shark diving
Leonardo DiCaprio's adventurous spirit led him to yet another mishap under the sea. In 2014 the actor sat down on "The Ellen Show" to recount a terrifying experience he had while diving with great white sharks in South Africa. While filming for "Blood Diamond" in 2006, DiCaprio had the opportunity to see the animals reigning at the top of the food chain up close and personal, but he wasn't exactly prepared for what he found.
"The tuna kinda got stuck on the top of the cage and the great white [leaped] out and tried to bite it and it went into the cage with me," he recalled, adding, " ... Half of its body was in and out, and I flattened down at the bottom ... it chomped a few times, but I survived it." DiCaprio told Wired that the shark eventually flipped his way out of the cage, narrowly missing his head by about an arms-length. At the time, professionals on the boat told him that no such accident had occurred in their 30 years of diving.
Despite the close call, the philanthropist admitted he couldn't speak more highly about the non-profit organizations that work to research and preserve the ocean and all its creatures. Don't expect him to get back in a scuba suit anytime soon, though. " ... It was absolutely terrifying," he recalled of the experience.
Leonardo DiCaprio's harrowing skydiving experience
Leonardo DiCaprio couldn't have been more correct when he told Vanity Fair: "If a cat has nine lives, I think I've used a few." The actor seems to have a penchant for getting as close to death as possible, whether it be in the name of making films or for the pure adrenaline rush. The "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" star admitted he almost fell to his death during a skydiving adventure when his instructor didn't immediately secure the parachute.
"It was a tandem dive. We pulled the first chute. That was knotted up. The gentleman I was with cut it free. We did another free fall for like another 5, 10 seconds," DiCaprio recalled. "I didn't even think about the extra chute, so I thought we were just plummeting to our death. He pulled the second, and that was knotted up too." Eventually after multiple tries, with the rest of the group far above him, the instructor was able to shake the parachute free midair.
After the parachute finally opened, DiCaprio said the harrowing dive had even more surprises. At the speed he and the instructor were descending, he was warned to brace for a crash landing. " ... He said, 'You're probably going to break your legs on the way down, because we're going too fast now,'" DiCaprio recalled. "So after you see your whole life flash in front of your eyes — twice — he says, 'Oh, your legs are going to get broken too.' We did, like, this barrel roll. We got bruised up, but no broken legs."
Leonardo DiCaprio was on a Delta flight when an engine burst into flames
Just a year after former pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger diverted a plane full of passengers into the Hudson River for an emergency landing after engines failed, Leonardo DiCaprio had a similar flight experience (minus the water). The actor was aboard a Delta flight en route to Moscow from New York in 2010 when he witnessed the engine malfunctioning.
"I was in business class, and an engine blew up in front of my eyes," he told Vanity Fair. "It was right after 'Sully' Sullenberger landed in the Hudson. I was sitting there looking out at the wing, and the entire wing exploded in a fireball." DiCaprio recalled being the only one looking out the window at the moment the engine burst into flames. "They shut all the engines off for a couple of minutes, so you're just sitting there gliding with absolutely no sound, and nobody in the plane was saying anything. It was a surreal experience. They started the engines back up, and we did an emergency landing at JFK," he explained.
The "Django Unchained" actor was one of 200 other passengers aboard the aircraft when the left wing of the plane caught on fire after takeoff, according to Daily Mail. The plane was forced to circle New York City for an hour dumping upwards of 60,000 pounds of fuel to lighten the load enough to safely land. "I've been doing this a long time and I have never seen anything like that," said Captain E. C. Anderson.
Leonardo DiCaprio said filming Shutter Island was draining
Leonardo DiCaprio's lead role in the 2010 film "Shutter Island" took him to dark places. The film revolves around two U.S. marshals in the 1950s who embark on a mission to a remote island to visit an asylum where one particular patient has disappeared. The lost patient had drowned both her children and the only clue as to why was a riddle she had inscribed in her room. The eerie thriller involves disturbing twists and turns, which DiCaprio said took a toll on him while filming.
In an interview with CBS News, he admitted that shooting in an abandoned mental hospital was an intense experience. "It was dilapidated and — I don't want to say you felt the ghosts, because that would be a little bit pretentious, but you felt this weird sense of confinement there," DiCaprio revealed. Aside from the spooky feelings on set, the twists and turns of the film also took a toll on him physically. "I was drained. I was absolutely drained. So much of this story is — it is a jigsaw puzzle," he added.
DiCaprio's difficulties filming paid off, as he gave another stellar performance in the movie. Although not nominated for an Oscar, "Shutter Island" was met with critical acclaim and praise-filled reviews, and received several awards.
Leonardo DiCaprio faced hate online for dating younger women
It's no secret that Leonardo DiCaprio is a Hollywood heartthrob thanks to his dazzling good looks and his on-camera charisma. While the actor has yet to settle down and tie the knot, he is often seen with a younger, stunning model on his arm, which many see as emblematic of Leo's shady side; fellow stars and fans alike have caught on to DiCaprio's penchant for dating women decades younger than him, and claim the star refuses to date women over the age of 25.
The "Inception" star was linked to model Camila Morrone from 2017 to 2022, despite Morrone being 22 years his junior. To put it into perspective, many of DiCaprio's ex-girlfriends were not alive or toddlers when "Titanic" premiered in 1997. Though he and his girlfriends have seemed genuinely happy, DiCaprio's alleged dating rule caused a firestorm on X, formerly known as Twitter, when fans criticized the actor for being spotted out with 19-year-old model Eden Polani.
"Not enough people are talking about Leonardo DiCaprio who is almost 50 — and 'getting close' to a 19 year old teenage girl," tweeted Dr. Charlotte Proudman. "I feel like he has Titantic trauma. He's dating women like he's still the age he was when he shot it, and he's ALWAYS on holiday on a yacht. Dude needs some EMDR," wrote journalist Caitlin Moran. Conservative broadcaster Megyn Kelly also chimed in on the debate in an episode of "The Megyn Kelly Show" (per Daily Mail), saying: "'He's in the news every week for how he won't date anybody past age 25. If he does, it makes news ... And now he's actually gone down to a teenager!"
Leo's obsessive compulsive behaviors caused delays on The Aviator set
Leonardo DiCaprio may be one of the highest-grossing actors of his generation, and undoubtedly one of the most successful, but even he knows a thing or two about set delays. The actor revealed he experienced obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms on the set of "The Aviator," which resulted in some scenes taking longer to film. As health and psychology officials (like the Mayo Clinic) explain, the condition "features a pattern of unwanted thoughts and fears known as obsessions. These obsessions lead you to do repetitive behaviors, also called compulsions."
In an interview with The Mirror in 2004 (per Express), the "Django" star admitted: "My thing was not stepping on cracks, or not stepping on certain things. Sometimes it took me 10 minutes to get to the set because I'd be pacing back and forth, stepping on gum stains." But the actor revealed he was eventually able to overcome the voice in his head. "I'm able to say at some point, 'OK, you're being ridiculous, stop stepping on every gum stain you see,'" he admitted, adding, "'You don't need to do that. You don't need to walk 20 feet back and put your foot on that thing. Nothing bad is going to happen.'"
DiCaprio's difficulties on set mirrored that of his character Howard Hughes, a renowned film producer who was diagnosed with OCD. "I let it all go and never listened to the other voice," he explained, adding that he was able to tap into the character and truly portray someone who struggles with the condition.