The award-winning film star Leonardo DiCaprio developed an interest in acting because he wanted to “get out of (his) neighbourhood.”
Speaking to Jennifer Lawrence for variety.com, DiCaprio shared, “I think a lot of my propulsion to want to act as a kid was to get out of my neighbourhood.” He revealed that his stepbrother’s success in commercials inspired him. “He was like, ‘Wait a minute, you can get paid to do that? I got to get out of this place.’ I was (our) stage mom, pushing my parents to take me on auditions. I told them, ‘This is going to be my college fund to get me money to try to have some sort of career in something.’ I didn’t book anything for a while.”
He recounted landing a Matchbox car commercial where he played a gangster with slicked-back hair, stating, “I had a briefcase and I opened it up.” When asked if he looked like a gangster at the audition, DiCaprio confirmed, “Yes. I slicked back my hair and I put a little leather jacket on. I booked Mickey’s Safety Club, too, an after-school special teaching kids the dangers of drugs. My first television show was The Outsiders. There’s my whole filmography.”
Recently, DiCaprio also expressed that he believes “Titanic” allowed him to become the “conductor of (his) own choices.” The actor starred alongside Kate Winslet in the record-breaking movie back in 1997, stating that the James Cameron-directed project changed the course of his career.
Reflecting on this, DiCaprio told Deadline, “Fully now in retrospect, I look back at that film and realise the thanks and the appreciation that I have for being a part of it, and to have been able to be in this incredibly fortunate position and not only to have been a part of that movie but to be able to be the conductor of my own choices since.”
He noted that the success of “Titanic” provided him the freedom to choose projects that interested him, marking it as a significant turning point in his career. “That has been just the greatest gift,” he added.