IT'S a funny feeling when a superstar comes into a room. The atmosphere changes. Leonardo DiCaprio is doing everything he can to be unassuming. He politely requests a coffee. He takes a seat without ceremony. He keeps his head down as he arranges his long limbs on the chair. It's almost as if the force of his star power is a bit of an embarrassment to him. And yet that special quality he brings is impossible to ignore.
Physically, DiCaprio has the grace of a big cat. His movements are slow and deliberate. His gaze dispassionate, with a flinty, feline edge. From his appearance on screen, I was expecting him to look boyish, barely post- adolescent, but DiCaprio is a proper man. He's broad and tall, and has considerable physical presence.
As an actor, he has, at 34, fully come of age. DiCaprio may have been packing massive star power since Titanic turned him into a one-man industry, but having gradually and assiduously built his career on serious, artistically sound performances, he is now established as one of the most talented actors of his generation. He's no longer cast as the upstart or arriviste either. In his latest film, Body of Lies, directed by Ridley Scott and co-starring Russell Crowe, he plays Roger Ferris, a CIA agent working in contemporary Iraq, whose job it is to uncover and sabotage terrorist cells operating within the country. Ferris is at the top of his game among the best and most experienced agents in the world.
"I like this character a lot," says DiCaprio, "certainly in a turbulent time like this, when the US is occupying the Middle East.
"Here you have a character -- a highly-trained CIA operative who is very effective at what he does and who has forged valuable relationships in the Middle East -- who knows that if there are going to be any long-term outcomes, he needs to be able to reach out to intelligence officials. And he isn't looking for that quick fix. Or the appearance of victory. He's looking for long-term solutions and trying to respect the culture and their ways and ultimately be patriotic and have a positive result.
"Meanwhile, his country is constantly undermining him, and usurping his intelligence. And I feel like his character is operating in a higher moral context than his country would like him to. And that's a fascinating character for me."
He is convincingly old and experienced enough to carry the part off, but only just. The condition of having reached an extreme of excellence that defines this character mirrors DiCaprio's own career. With heavyweight projects such as Blood Diamond and The Departed still in recent memory, he's now earned enough gravitas to overtake his heart-throb appeal. Two years ago, he wouldn't have seemed credible as Roger Ferris. This is something of which Ridley Scott must have been aware. When asked why he wanted DiCaprio for the role, he says, "Because he's one of the biggest stars in the United States. He's handsome, he's cheerful. The girls love him. He's a fantastic actor."
A glance at the ensemble working on the project gives you the sense that it was an in-crowd team. Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott have a long-standing professional relationship (Gladiator, A Good Year), are friends and share the same agent. DiCaprio and Crowe had cut their teeth together back in 1995, working on the film The Quick And The Dead, an important breakthrough project for both of them. "We forged a friendship there, on that set," says Leonardo of Russell Crowe.
"Because we didn't know where to fit in. We didn't belong to the character-actor group or the movie-star group. I remember talking to him about movies a lot back then, about the type of actor that he wanted to be, the type of films that he likes. And he's the same guy that he was back then. He's incredibly funny, he's committed to his work, he's a fantastic actor. He's great to be around. And I've nothing but great things to say about him and I was happy to re-unite with him on this movie, because I think he'd developed an incredible body of work." Since Titanic changed his life forever, DiCaprio has always seemed to painstakingly avoid courting attention. He's too sensible and well-mannered, however, to whinge about the price of fame.
"The consensus among people that are blessed enough to be able to do what we do is that, although you may hear the odd complaint, we entirely understand that it comes with the territory and the responsibility of doing what we do, otherwise we would quit. We are all very lucky and a fortunate group of people that has very little to complain about."
I can't say I blame him, but he really is the master of the art of the celebrity dodge. His answers fortify rather than break down the air of starry remove around him, and he often reels them off as if they were learnt by rote. Even on a subject on which he is openly impassioned -- the new president-elect of the United States -- he expresses his feelings in platitudes.
"I got to watch it (the election) in Rome, where I watched the 2000 debacle. And so I stayed up all night and watched the results come in and it was an overwhelming, resounding victory for our new fantastic President Mr Obama, and I couldn't be more excited," he says, as if reading out a press release.
Glimpses of the real man behind the iron mask are gained mostly from second-hand reports. He gives little away voluntarily. The day after I meet him, the Daily Mail runs a story claiming that he spent the previous night partying with Sienna Miller in Mayfair club Jalouse. There is reputed to be a wild side to him, a streak of Jack Nicholson-style modelising and partying that he never willingly owns up to. We only ever see glimpses of it in lurid tabloid headlines. In the past, he's dated Helena Christensen, Gisele Bundchen and a string of other Amazonian goddesses, but has never spoken about any of them. As the gossip columns have it, he's in a relationship with Israeli supermodel Bar Rafaeli. She is, predictably, unspeakably beautiful and 10 years his junior.
He's clearly bright and, even when talking to journalists under duress, demonstrates a patina of light charm. He receives compliments graciously and makes little jokes. "People always wonder what the big injury story is," he says of filming one of the more harrowing scenes in the film in which he is tied up and physically tormented, "mine was that I got a cold!" but it's a strategic kind of charm that distracts from the fact that he never gives anything away. Leonardo DiCaprio certainly dazzles, but it's all the better to blind you.
I wish I knew the date it was published but the credit of this article didn't have a link
to the source.
Enjoy tho!
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Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:48 am by si25
Subject: DiCaprio dazzles with Body Talk 
