Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (/diˈkæprioʊ/, /dɪ-/; Italian: ; born November 11, 1974) is an American actor and film producer. Known for his work in biographical and period films, he is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award and three Golden Globe Awards. As of 2019, his films have grossed over $7.2 billion worldwide, and he has been placed eight times in annual rankings of the world's highest-paid actors. In 2005, he was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to the arts, and in 2016, he appeared in Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. DiCaprio was voted one of the 50 greatest actors of all time in a 2022 readers' poll by Empire.
Born in Los Angeles, DiCaprio began his career in the late 1980s by appearing in television commercials. In the early 1990s, he had recurring roles in various television shows, such as the sitcom Parenthood, and had his first major film part as author Tobias Wolff in This Boy's Life (1993). He received critical acclaim and his first Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for his performance as a developmentally disabled boy in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993). DiCaprio achieved international stardom with the star-crossed romances Romeo Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997). After the latter became the highest-grossing film at the time, he reduced his workload for a few years. In an attempt to shed his image of a romantic hero, DiCaprio sought roles in other genres, including crime drama in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Gangs of New York (2002); the latter marked the first of his many successful collaborations with director Martin Scorsese.
DiCaprio earned Golden Globe nominations for his performances in the biopic The Aviator (2004), the political thriller Blood Diamond (2006), the crime drama The Departed (2006) and the romantic drama Revolutionary Road (2008). In the 2010s, he made environmental documentaries and starred in several high-profile directors' successful projects, including the action thriller Inception (2010), the western Django Unchained (2012), the biopic The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), the survival drama The Revenant (2015)—for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor—and the comedy-drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).
DiCaprio is the founder of Appian Way Productions—a production company that has made some of his films and the documentary series Greensburg (2008–2010)—and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting environmental awareness. He regularly supports charitable causes and has produced several documentaries on the environment. He currently serves as one of the United Nations Messengers of Peace. DiCaprio's personal life has been the subject of media attention, particularly because of his romantic involvement with women who are often much younger than him.
Early life and acting background
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born on November 11, 1974, in Los Angeles, California. He is the only child of Irmelin (née Indenbirken), a legal secretary, and George DiCaprio, an underground comix artist and distributor; they met while attending college and moved to Los Angeles after graduating. His mother is German and immigrated to the United States when she was 12, and his father is of Italian and German descent. His maternal grandfather, Wilhelm Indenbirken, was German, and his maternal grandmother, Helene Indenbirken, was a Russian immigrant living in Germany. DiCaprio was raised as a Catholic. Sources have falsely claimed his maternal grandmother was born in Odesa, Ukraine; there is no evidence that DiCaprio has any relatives of Ukrainian birth or heritage.
DiCaprio's parents named him Leonardo because his pregnant mother first felt him kick while she was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Uffizi museum in Florence, Italy. When DiCaprio was one year old, his father moved out of their house after he fell in love with another woman. Because his parents wanted to raise him together, they moved into twin cottages with a shared garden in Echo Park, a neighborhood in Los Angeles. DiCaprio's father lived with his girlfriend and her son, Adam Farrar, with whom DiCaprio developed a close relationship as they grew up. DiCaprio and his mother later moved to other neighborhoods, such as Los Feliz, while she was employed in several jobs. He attended the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies for four years and later the Seeds Elementary School, before enrolling at the John Marshall High School. DiCaprio later said that he had hated public school and wanted to audition for acting jobs instead. He dropped out of high school later, eventually earning a general equivalency diploma.
DiCaprio has said his career choice as a child was to become a marine biologist or an actor. He eventually favored the latter as he liked impersonating characters and imitating people, and seeing their reaction to his acting. His interest in performing began at the age of two when he went onto the stage at a performance festival and danced spontaneously to a positive response from the crowd. He was also motivated to learn acting by his stepbrother's appearance in a television commercial, for which Farrar earned $50,000. DiCaprio has said in interviews that his first television appearance was in the children's series Romper Room, and that he was dismissed from the show for being disruptive. However, the show's host has denied that any children were removed from the show in this way. At 14, he began appearing in several commercials for Matchbox cars, which he calls his first role. DiCaprio later appeared in commercials for Kraft Singles, Bubble Yum and Apple Jacks. In 1989, he played the role of Glen in two episodes of the television show The New Lassie.
At the beginning of his career, DiCaprio had difficulty finding an agent. When he found one, he suggested DiCaprio change his name to Lenny Williams to appeal to American audiences, which he declined to do. DiCaprio remained jobless for a year and a half, even after 100 auditions. Following this lack of success, DiCaprio decided to give up acting but his father persuaded him to persevere with it. Motivated by his father and financial security, he continued to audition; after a talent agent, who knew his mother's friend, recommended him to casting directors, DiCaprio secured roles in about 20 commercials. By the early 1990s, he began acting regularly on television, starting with a role in the pilot of The Outsiders (1990) and one episode of the soap opera Santa Barbara (1990), in which he played a teenage alcoholic. DiCaprio's career prospects improved when he was cast in Parenthood, a series based on the 1989 comedy film of the same name. To prepare for the role of Garry Buckman, a troubled teenager, he analyzed Joaquin Phoenix's performance in the original film. His work that year earned him two nominations at the 12th Youth in Film Awards—Best Young Actor in a Daytime Series for Santa Barbara and Best Young Actor Starring in a New Television Series for Parenthood. Around this time, he was a contestant on the children's game show Fun House, on which he performed several stunts, including catching the fish inside a small pool using only his teeth.
