Leonardo DiCaprio went from being noticed to being a megastar in the space of about four years, and now looks likely to win this year's Best Actor Oscar. He was hand-plucked from 400 actors by Robert De Niro to play the lead role in This Boy’s Life (1993), got a well-deserved Oscar nomination for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), and romantic lead status, at 20, was upon him. He tragically kicked the bucket in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996), then in Titanic (1997), and the world went wild.
Some wobbly years followed, as DiCaprio – publicly stung by being one of the few elements in James Cameron’s megahit not to receive an Oscar nomination – struggled to translate his suddenly immense fame into lasting popularity and critical respect. Both The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and The Beach (2000) were box office disappointments domestically. Even his first film with Scorsese, the out-of-control Gangs of New York (2002), was a dicey proposition, in which his own performance got indifferent reviews.
Leonardo DiCaprio's career by numbers Play! 01:58
This collaboration, though, pulled him out of the rut, as did his breezier, more comfortable star turn for Spielberg in the same year’s Catch Me If You Can. His following projects for Scorsese, The Aviator (2004) and The Departed (2006), were steps towards maturity, as was Blood Diamond (2006), and the meme started to stick that he craved one of the little gold statues, and would keep doggedly working towards one.
If he’d been nominated for Django Unchained (2012), he’d probably have won. And he can’t have been far off for The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). It’s a rare DiCaprio film these days that’s not a huge hit: one Body of Lies (2008), say, for every couple of Inceptions or Gatsbys. Even after that Revenant ordeal, he's hardly resting complacently on his laurels; his next film, Scorsese's The Devil in the White City, sees DiCaprio playing a torture-mad serial killer in turn-of-the-century Chicago. In the meantime, vote for his best – and worst – films below.
