Without falling into roles in action franchises, or airing his life on social networks, the protagonist of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is still valid as the first day.
They say that he is the "unicorn of Hollywood", the last of a species that for more than a century starred in the dreams and desires of the movie-going audience. Leonardo DiCaprio can boast of having all the attributes required of any self-respecting great seventh art star: charismatic but mysterious, an inspiration to the greats, and a box office hit, adored by both critics and the public.
After four years of retirement after raising his long-awaited first statuette, the 44-year-old actor returns to continue increasing an already impressive filmography with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino, one of the films of the year. At a time when that rating only accompanies the big action franchises and when the influx of digital platforms forever blurred the limits of the window display system, DiCaprio insisted on continuing to ride into the sunset of what Tarantino himself qualifies as the "end of an era". In Hollywood that is to come, it seems unlikely that we will again witness a star that fulfills the commandments of the quintessential Hollywood star like him.
Admired, without falling into superheroes and breaking the box office
Since he got his first nomination in 1993 for Who Does Gilbert Grape Love?, the interpreter had to wait more than 20 years to win Oscar thanks to Revenant: The Revenant. The chase for the statuette had become a classic Internet meme –bear attack using–, and the personal crusade of the moviegoing crowd.
Seeing him on stage giving a speech in favor of the fight for the environment was the perfect redemption in the face of an injustice that had taken too epic overtones. His is something like the antithesis of the American dream: succeeding too soon and having to prove over a long career that success is deserved. Everyone, even those who accused him of being just a baby-faced idol, ended up acknowledging his generational talent.
In an industry dominated by action blockbusters, sagas, and family-friendly animated remakes, DiCaprio stands as a genre unto itself. Unlike other colleagues from the A-list of the movie mecca such as Robert Downey Jr., Jennifer Lawrence, George Clooney, or Johnny Depp, the Californian managed to maintain his star status for more than two decades by placing himself in the cinematographic interest of the project as the only precept. No red cloaks or lightsabers.
Leonardo DiCaprio's last ten film releases grossed close to three and a half billion dollars. While other performers who used to be a guarantee like Will Smith or Brad Pitt starred in notorious stumbling blocks in recent years, he proved capable of turning a film intended for an auteur audience like Revenant: The Revenant into an international blockbuster. And he's still in shape: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is already the best premiere in Quentin Tarantino's filmography in the United States. For viewers, seeing his name on the poster is a guarantee of quality.
Social media keeps your aura alive
At a time when movies or series premieres crowd countless platforms and streaming windows, each artist overexposes his life and work on social networks and Spotify shoots us daily with the umpteenth new single from the fashionable singer, the Mystery as a marketing tool is today as unusual as it is effective. Like Adele in music or Bolt on the athletic tracks, DiCaprio spaced out his projects as much as possible to dedicate himself body and soul to them and generate great media expectations.
Every year Forbes magazine publishes a list of the performers who have made the most money in recent times. Action franchise stars like Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg, or Robert Downey Jr. regularly top a ranking that DiCaprio has not led since 2011 when he released The Sinister Island and The Origin. The interpreter chose to cut his payroll to be able to work on the projects that interest him. In the new Tarantino, for example, he lowered his cachet by up to five million to meet the budget. DiCaprio also refuses, unlike most of today's stars, to receive a salary increase to put his social networks at the service of promoting the film in question.
James Cameron, Danny Boyle, Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes, Ridley Scott, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Nolan, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Baz Luhrmann (twice), Quentin Tarantino (two more), and Martin Scorsese (up to five times) are the filmmakers. who directed the Californian throughout his career and who could perfectly make up the All-Star of Hollywood cinema of the last three decades. Of the active actors, perhaps only myths of the seventh art such as Meryl Streep or Daniel Day-Lewis, who seems closer to definitive retirement than returning to a set, can today boast such an extraordinary list of projects behind them.
One of the essential elements of any self-respecting classic movie star is that aura of mystery and exclusivity that surrounds them. Like Brando, Monroe, or Hepburn (both), inaccessible, eccentric, and ethereal characters who only exposed themselves to the noise of the world to meet the audience on a ten-meter-long screen. The rise of social media ended that. Now it is known what the stars eat, where they travel, what series they are watching, and who they slept with today, yesterday, and the day before yesterday; vulgarizing, incidentally, his public profile. DiCaprio maintains that enigmatic halo, using only his Instagram or Twitter accounts to talk about the importance of the environmental fight.
It may seem redundant, but there are few actors in Hollywood more opaque than him when it comes to his romantic relationships. And he does it without hiding since every week we come across images of his daily routine: playing volleyball, watching a Lakers game, giving everything at a music festival, or taking pictures of his girlfriend, the Italian Camila Morrone, with Instagrammable vocation Despite his famous history of romances with young blondes under the age of 25, the truth is that the actor prevented his life from overshadowing his work in the slightest: he never spoke in public about any relationship or posed on a red carpet accompanied by the couple in question. The only exception took place at the 2005 Oscars, where he was seen with the Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen.
Titanic was archived
The best proof of DiCaprio's stellar status is that, even though we are all able to list a good number of unforgettable characters played by him, no role managed to overshadow his own figure. Not even the intrepid and romantic Jack, star of Titanic, one of the five most watched films in cinema history. More than two decades after its premiere, it seems logical that the actor flatly refuses to comment on whether or not his character fits into the happy table. As the video demonstrates, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie themselves do not remove it from the official no comment.
The actors Tobey Maguire, Lukas Haas, and Kevin Connolly, the magician David Blaine, the director Harmony Korine and the recent addition of Orlando Bloom together with Leo formed the gang known as The Pussy Pose in the early nineties when DiCaprio and Maguire met as teenagers in a casting Thirty years later they are still friends. After burning down every nightclub in Hollywood and Manhattan, now, with several parents among its members, they continue to meet to go see the school play of one of their sons. We know that this does not imply any professional merit, but why would a good guy not score when assessing his profile as a star? Well done Leo.
