Leonardo DiCaprio covers GQ October. He’s in the J. Edgar movie co-starring Armie Hammer and directed by Clint Eastwood. DiCaprio’s doing some kind of James Dean popped collar, quiff thing on the cover. He gives a really interesting and… grown-up interview. He’s smart, he has fully-formed, considered opinions and this interview is a good read. His interview and photo shoot are below.
- On not caring about money as an actor, but having to care as a producer: ‘Throughout my career, I never knew which movies of mine made money and which didn’t. When Titanic came out, people would say, ‘Do you realize what a success this is?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s a hit.’ The [money] stuff never mattered to me until I was into my thirties and got interested in producing, and people would show me charts explaining what finances a movie, what you’ll make from foreign, what you’ll make from domestic, what you need to make an R-rated film that’s a comedy versus a drama. But even now I say that unless you want to prove that you can carry a film with your name, continuously trying to achieve box-office success is a dead end.’
- On if he has any interest in directing: ‘Yeah, I do. And if I did direct, I would try to have the same no bulls**t approach to it as [Clint Eastwood] and his crew have. Seriously, there are no frills on his set. It’s a small, tight-knit crew.’
- On his career trajectory: ‘My introduction to acting in films was with De Niro in This Boy’s Life. When I got the part I was 15, and somebody said, ‘Do you realize who you’re gonna work with?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I guess.’ And they said, ‘No, no, no. Go watch all of his films, and then go see these people’s films.’ So I obsessively watched films on VHS, and I remember feeling so overwhelmed by what had been done in cinema already. Watching a young Brando or James Dean or Montgomery Clift, I was like, Oh, my God, how can anyone ever hope to achieve that type of greatness?’
- On which movie he’s proud of: ‘The Aviator. I’d wanted to play Howard Hughes for 10 years and was around for multiple rewrites. Michael Mann was on it at one point. And finally [Martin] Scorsese got involved. I was very proud of that movie. It was the first film where I felt inherently like a partner.’
- On a movie he originally passed on, then changed his mind: ‘My father has always been a huge force with me. I had passed on a script about the French poet Arthur Rimbaud [Total Eclipse]. He explained to me that Rimbaud was the James Dean of his time—a radical who took on the institution of poetry and turned it upside down. I did the movie, and I loved playing him. If I just waited for moments of I have to do this, I would do a movie only every four or five years.’
