f&t in english LDC My parents helped me but they never pushed or steered me in any particular direction. It was my dream and ambition to become an actor, but I never thought I would make it. But I kept pushing and once I started getting some good roles then I knew that this was going to be my life. I think, deep down, acting was all about wanting love and attention… Love is what people are hungry for. That’s absolutely why I became an actor. F&T Were you a ladies’ man as a teenager? LDC No. I’ve always been a slow starter. My first date was with a girl called Cessi. We had a beautiful relationship over the phone all summer and then when we met I couldn’t look her in the eye. F&T What do you get from acting now? LDC Acting is the only thing that I’ve held onto that is true about who I am. Everything else seems to change in life. Everything else seems to be metamorphosing into something different, but acting, being a performer, is the only thing that I have known ever since I was a kid. It has consumed me in a lot of different ways. It’s like something that I can’t escape. F&T How do you feel about your life in general? LDC What I definitely feel a need for is to make my life about more than just my career. One night I was thinking to myself how little of my life has been lived normally and not spent on some far-off movie location. Family is something I’m starting to think about more and more especially now that my Oma (grandmother) is no longer around. It makes you think about the impermanence of things and how important it is to be part of a family and have some meaning apart from your work. F&T When you look back at the extraor-
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dinary success you’ve had as a young man, what do you value in terms of your personal life? LDC I’m very grateful for the kind of career I’ve been able to have, but at the end of the day, some of the happiest times were when I had nothing. I remember that innocence of youth. F&T What are your best memories of growing up with your parents? LDC My dad (Geroge DiCaprio, 65, who divorced Leonardo’s mother when he was only 7 months old) is still a diehard, left-wing hippie, and will be until the day he dies. My mother did everything to get me into the best schools she could find. She would drive three or four hours a day so I wouldn’t have to go to very violent local public schools in L.A.
F&T Do you feel that your life has been distorted by all the publicity that’s surrounded you since Titanic? LDC At first, I hated the way I was turned into a pretty boy and that’s all that was expected of me. It made me almost want to stop acting for a while because the attention that was focused on me was not where I wanted to take my career. I didn’t want to do romantic films or anything which just exploited I WAS SYSTEMATICALLY my image or appearance. I also kind REJECTED AT 14 FOR A FULL of had to be more careful about the YEAR. I WENT ON HUNDREDS friends I was hanging out with. I was living a pretty big life for as while and OF AUDITIONS AND then that just gets tiresome and get DIDN’T GET A SINGLE JOB. all the partying out of your system. I THAT HELPS YOU NOT TO live much more quietly these days. I haven’t done the nightclub scene in a CARE TOO MUCH. THERE’S long, long time. It’s boring, to tell you A PART OF YOU THAT SAYS, the truth.
‘YOU KNOW WHAT, NOT EVERYTHING IS HINGED ON THIS ONE JOB.’
F&T What music are you listening to at the moment? LDC Absolutely nothing. Isn’t that weird? My life is kind of music-less right