Leonardo DiCaprio Net Worth
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Leonardo DiCaprio’s net worth is something that is much to the imagination of many as he is a known playboy with strong values and a liking for playing poker now and then.
* Born: November 11, 1974 in California, Hollywood, United States
* Nationality: American
* Occupation: Actor
Full name Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio; born November 11, 1974, in Los Angeles, CA; son of George (creator and distributor of underground comic books) and Irmalin (a legal secretary) DiCaprio.
When critics began to take note of actor Leonardo DiCaprio, they often mentioned his boyish looks and his young age as well as his talent. Not often does a major star come along who has an Academy Award nomination and a role in a film with Robert De Niro under his belt by age twenty, but DiCaprio is not a typical Hollywood sensation. As he grew up, he began taking more challenging roles, proving his talent as an adult actor.
Leonardo DiCaprio, known as Leo to his friends, was born in Los Angeles in 1974. His Italian-American father, George, created and distributed underground comic books, and worked as a performance artist. DiCaprio’s German-born mother, Irmalin, worked as a legal secretary. The couple separated when DiCaprio was an infant but remained on good terms and now both manage their son’s career. DiCaprio received his first name when, still in the womb, he began kicking while his mother was standing in front of a daVinci painting in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
DiCaprio grew up in a rundown neighborhood in Hollywood, California. He credits his current “take-it-or-leave-it” attitude toward money to his unglamorous early life: “The money they throw around doesn’t get me … I don’t want to sound like I’m some underprivileged kid, but you learn certain values. Like not accepting that because you’re in a hotel you have to pay $5 for a Coke–just go down the block for a $3 six-pack. On the other hand, I have a $600 leather jacket. And my $35,000 Jeep,” he told Jesse Green of the New York Times.
DiCaprio’s parents were hippies during the 1960s and have never quite abandoned the counterculture lifestyle. His upbringing was unconventional, which DiCaprio considers to his benefit. DiCaprio told Jamie Diamond of Mademoiselle that he feels “absolutely blessed. I’ve grown up with the fact that I wasn’t normal–the strangest people I’ve ever met were at my parents’ houses. It was odd to visit friends who lived in all-white houses and didn’t have bizarre artwork on the wall!” DiCaprio remains close to both his parents. He bought his father a car for his fiftieth birthday and threw a large party with a ska band and polka music. “I want to be the perfect child. I owe so much to my parents and the way I was brought up, but I have sometimes overlooked it–and it’s something that I don’t want to overlook,” he told Ingrid Sischy of Interview.
DiCaprio’s show business career began at age ten, when he started auditioning for television commercials. His stepbrother, who appeared in a spot for Golden Grahams cereal and earned $50,000, inspired him. Eventually DiCaprio appeared in dozens of commercials and in Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” video. He also acted in educational films, including How to Deal with a Parent Who Takes Drugs, and on episodes of television shows, such as Roseanne. In 1990, he landed a regular part on a short-lived TV version of the movie Parenthood before going on to the successful series Growing Pains, where he played Luke Brower, a homeless boy who moved in with Alan Thicke and family during the show’s last season in 1991-92. He used his television earnings to buy a new house for his mother and lived with her until he was 21, at which time he got a place of his own a short distance away.
DiCaprio left regular school when he landed the part on Growing Pains while still in the eleventh grade. He finished high school, which he never cared for, through home study.”I cheated a lot because I just could not sit and do homework. Most of the stuff that I got from school was from hanging out with friends and meeting kids,” he explained to Interview. During the end of his stint on Growing Pains, DiCaprio won a principal role in the movie This Boy’s Life, based on Tobias Wolff’s autobiographical book about a boy who comes of age in the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s with a fun-loving but erratic mother, played by Ellen Barkin, and a bullying, controlling stepfather played by Robert DeNiro. Released in the spring of 1993, This Boy’s Life did poorly at the box office but garnered praise for DiCaprio’s performance. David Ansen of Newsweek called DiCaprio “astonishingly talented.” About his scenes with the intense DeNiro, DiCaprio explained to Premiere: “It was kind of hard not to get frightened. But I liked it when he scared me. It helped me react.” The film’s director Michael Caton-Jones said to Newsweek that DiCaprio “has this amazing ability to convey quite complex emotions. All I wanted him to do was be a kid. He did that magnificently.”
In 1993, DiCaprio earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance as a mentally disturbed teenager in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, an off-beat drama set in an Iowa small town. The film starred Johnny Depp as Gilbert, the older brother who must look after the erratic DiCaprio and their neurotic mother. “When I did What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? I had no particular pressure on me … I didn’t even know what I did in Gilbert Grape. I just went off with whatever I felt instinctively without a second thought,” DiCaprio told Interview.
In The Quick and the Dead, DiCaprio portrayed a character known only as “The Kid” and was gunned down by his father, played by Gene Hackman. This satire of tight-lipped, tough guy westerns, directed by tongue-in-cheek director Sam Raimi, also starred Sharon Stone. Stone commented to Entertainment Weekly that DiCaprio was “so good, it’s scary. I was dying to have him be in this movie. I would have carried the boy on my back to the set every day if that’s what it would have taken. Luckily, Leonardo is down-to-earth and walked by himself.” In his review of The Quick and the Dead, Hal Hinson of the Washington Post wrote: “Leonardo DiCaprio proves that he’s got a star’s charisma and a precocious talent–he’s more impressive with each movie he makes.”
A searing, true-life account of a New York teenager’s addiction to heroin, The Basketball Diaries went in and out of production in Hollywood for years. Matt Dillon, Anthony Michael Hall, Eric Stolz, Rick Schroeder, and the late River Phoenix all expressed interest in the project at one time or another. When production finally got underway in 1994, director Scott Kalvert, who had witnessed DiCaprio’s work in This Boy’s Life, offered the part to the young actor. DiCaprio agreed to appear in the gritty, low-budget film for a modest salary. “I could have done sexual roles, but then you get into the teen-dream sort of thing. And teen comedies are so happy-go-lucky, they make you want to vomit. I’m drawn to dark roles only because they are better written,” DiCaprio explained to Mademoiselle.
Based on James Carroll’s 1978 book, The Basketball Diaries was shot in New York City. The California-born and bred DiCaprio was unfamiliar with the East Coast but came to greatly enjoy the Big Apple. “I want to move here,” he told Premiere. Playing a heroin addict was challenging and disturbing to DiCaprio, who tries to avoid dangerous excess despite his fondness for partying and nightlife. “I touched upon emotions I’ve never tapped my entire life. Every time I was doing it, I was going a little further,” he said of the film’s graphic drug withdrawal scenes to Entertainment Weekly. Mark Wahlberg co-starred in The Basketball Diaries. “He’s the most down-to-earth person I’ve met. Very un-Hollywood,” Wahlberg said of DiCaprio to People. DiCaprio’s performance in The Basketball Diaries, released in the spring of 1995, drew better notices than the film itself. You leave The Basketball Diaries believing that Leonardo DiCaprio can do anything,” wrote Peter Travers of Rolling Stone.
DiCaprio’s attraction to deeply troubled characters continued in Total Eclipse, in which he portrayed the young and doomed French poet Arthur Rimbaud, who shocked nineteenth-century French society with his outrageous behavior. The film explored Rimbaud’s relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, played by British actor David Thewlis. “Basically, it’s about stepping into the unknown. To be that courageous. Rimbaud wasn’t blase about anything. He did things that were unheard of! If I could just scratch the surface of that,” DiCaprio told the New York Times. Directed by Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland and made in France, Total Eclipse was panned by critics when it was released in late 1995 and barely registered at the box office. DiCaprio’s performance was also poorly received. Janet Maslin of the New York Times said DiCaprio “conveys all of Rimbaud’s arrogance with little of his all-important acuity and charisma.” More interested in expanding his dramatic range, even at the risk of failure, than in carefully nurturing a narrow star image, DiCaprio chalks the film up as a valuable learning experience.
A standard approach to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet did not appeal to DiCaprio. “Our Romeo and Juliet is a little more hard-core and a lot cooler. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d had to jump around in tights,” he told Premiere. Directed by Australian Baz Luhrmann, best known for his quirky comedy Strictly Ballroom, this film adaptation of Shakespeare’s unhappy romance is set in a garishly futuristic Florida town called Verona Beach. Claire Danes, who gained notoriety on TV’s My So-Called Life, played Juliet. The lovers are separated by the rivalry between their gangster families and by ethnicity (he’s Anglo, she’s Hispanic), while the soundtrack thumps out a pulsating, high-voltage beat. Though great liberties were taken with setting and characterization, Luhrmann’s version retained Shakespeare’s Elizabethan language. “This film’s young lovers, played radiantly by Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, have the requisite magic and speak their lines with passionate conviction,” said the New York Times. David Ansen of Newsweek commented that “DiCaprio is a wonderfully boyish Romeo–impetuous, passionate, in love with love.”
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