LEONARDO
DICAPRIO

Leonardo DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles on 11 November 1974. This Boy’s Life and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, both released in 1993, established him as a young film actor; the latter brought an Academy Award nomination. Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997) then placed him at the centre of romances with a much larger public profile.

Working with Martin Scorsese, he moved through Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island and The Wolf of Wall Street. The collaboration later continued with Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Across these films, the characters’ ambitions and loyalties can become difficult to separate from the institutions around them.

He won the 2016 Academy Award for Actor in a Leading Role for The Revenant. His career also includes Inception, Django Unchained and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as well as producing work through Appian Way, which he cofounded. These credits offer several ways into his work, from a large-scale thriller to a film about the anxieties of a working actor.

FLM.RED’s reading follows the gap between confidence and strain. DiCaprio can make a character seem certain of his own story while a change in pace, breath or expression suggests the effort needed to sustain it. Watching that tension is especially rewarding when the film asks how much of a person’s identity is a performance.