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Before you can talk about Leonardo DiCaprio, you have to decide which Leo you're talking about. Is it Leo DiCaprio, the child actor who shone in This Boy's Life and What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, who was nominated for an Oscar, and who seemed to be, in the words of film critic David Thomson, "brushed with genius"? Or is it Leo DiCaprio, the Titanic star who was, for a few luminous years, the lust object of every teenage girl on all seven continents? (Okay, there might not be teenage girls on Antarctica. But if there were, circa 1998, you can bet they had Leo posters Fun-Tacked to the walls of their igloos.) Or is it Leo DiCaprio, the Gisele-dating, club-hopping, Page-Six frequenting, Elizabeth Berkley's boyfriend-beating ringleader of a ragtag band of Hollywood miscreants?
Of course, if you're talking about DiCaprio's fame, you have to talk about all three. You may, alas, also have to talk about David Blaine. But only briefly.
We should start by saying that DiCaprio is a very good -- even great -- actor. This is, after all, the reason for which he first earned his renown. Granted, after Titanic and its aftermath, this fact was easy to forget.
As of this past Christmas, though, Leo the Actor was front and centre once again. He starred in Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can, with mixed results. In Gangs, Leo plays a young ruffian named Amsterdam who's out to avenge his father's death and he manages to hold his own, but just by the scruff of his chinny-chin-chin.
In any case, Leo does his best to bring this role alive. Revenge parts, though, are notoriously unforgiving. Basically, all you get to do is squint a lot and bide your time. Biding one's time doesn't exactly make for compelling on-screen histrionics. In fact, it doesn't require much acting at all. This is how Charles Bronson was able to make three more Death Wish movies after he was clinically dead.
Leo's plight in Gangs isn't helped much by the fact that the object of his time-biding, Daniel Day-Lewis's William Cutter, is one of the great examples of on-screen histrionics in recent memory. In this context, it's hard to blame Leo for looking so bland. But that's what you get for breaking one of the oldest rules of acting. Number one, don't work with children or animals. Number two, never play opposite a man in a handlebar moustache and a stove-pipe hat. You'll get upstaged every time.
For a dose of vintage Leo, you have to check out Catch Me If You Can. In that film, you get Leo at the top of his game: charming, devilish, boyish, and seductive, often all at once. In one review we read, a critic noted how surprising it was that the twenty-eight-year-old DiCaprio could so convincingly play a fifteen-year-old. For us, the big surprise was: Leo DiCaprio is twenty-eight? Really? So that's how he gets into all those clubs. We just assumed he had a really good fake ID.
The funny thing about DiCaprio is that, while he's theoretically one of the most famous actors in the world -- Titanic and Gisele and all that -- he just doesn't seem that famous. He certainly doesn't seem as 24-hour, in-your-face ubiquitous as, say, Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt. In fact, we'd have forgotten all about him if it weren't for all those late-night sightings with David Blaine and Tobey Maguire and Lukas Haas. And while we're on the subject, isn't Lukas Haas, like, ten years old? And isn't Tobey Maguire, like, seventeen?
This might explain why all that distasteful "Pussy Posse" gossip hasn't seemed to sully Leo in the same way that, say, Charlie Sheen was sullied by all those hookers-and-coke stories. These days, you can't look at Charlie Sheen without thinking "hookers and coke," as though it was his favourite mixed drink. In fact, we used to think that even before those stories came out. Charlie Sheen has just always seemed greasy and gross. His name is "sheen," for crying out loud.
Whereas Leo -- and the rest of his P.P. -- seem more like your friend's rascally kid brother. (Okay, the rest of his P.P. save for David Blaine, who's always come off as a grade-A knob. Look, I'm standing on a pole! It's "magic"!) Sure, Leo gets into a little mischief. But what fifteen-year-old doesn't? Just take away his slingshot and ground him for a week.
Don't get us wrong -- we don't doubt Leo has an unsavoury side. For evidence, check out the recent issue of US Weekly in which he appears in two different paparazzi pics. In the first, he's at a party with the increasingly greasy/slimy Britney Spears. He's wearing a ballcap screwed on at a Flava Flav angle, which is fine...if you're Flava Flav. To make matters worse, he's flashing a gang sign. A gang sign! Leo's all up in the hizza, keepin' it rizzeal!
In the second photo, he's skulking along some sunlit L.A. boulevard wearing the obligatory ballcap and Bono-shades, feigning a desire for anonymity. He's also wearing an oversized purple velour tracksuit and a pair of Uggs, those trendy slipper boots. Here, he doesn't look unsavoury so much as he looks like an actor on the set of Fraggle Rock, who's taken off his felt head and is headed over to the craft table.
All of which is to say that, despite being in the biggest money-making film of all time and spending the ensuing years trolling New York nightclubs in the company of dimbulb supermodels and rowdy brats, Leo, somewhat miraculously, still has a relatively clean slate. All his extracurricular shenanigans have yet to permanently skew our perception of him -- the way they've permanently skewed our perceptions of Charlie Sheen or Arnold Schwarzenegger. We can still go to a movie and enjoy Leo the actor without being haunted by Leo the party boy. And Leo the actor is still very damned enjoyable, as this holiday season proved.
So we say: Keep the fame. You've earned it. But remember: there are things you can be famous for, and then there are things you shouldn't be famous for. Great acting -- yes. Picking on poor Elizabeth Berkley's boyfriend -- no. You've hinted in interviews that you want to shed your bad-boy rep. If so, more power to you. We'll just add this: While you're shedding things, you might want to ditch that purple velour tracksuit, Gobo.
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