Body of Lies (2008)
Russell Crowe as Ed Hoffman and Leonardo DiCaprio as Roger Ferris in "Body of Lies."
Big Stars Wielding an Array of Accents, Fighting the War on Terrorism
By A. O. SCOTTRidley Scott’s new movie, “Body of Lies,” raises a potentially disturbing question. If terrorism has become boring, does that mean the terrorists have won? Or, conversely, is the grinding tedium of this film good news for our side, evidence of the awesome might of Western popular culture, which can turn even the most intransigent and bloodthirsty real-world villains into fodder for busy, contrived and lifeless action thrillers?
The second answer seems more plausible, but there are other puzzles in “Body of Lies” that are not so easily solved and that may distract from sober contemplation of geopolitical pseudorealities. Such as: what exactly is going on with Leonardo DiCaprio’s accent, or Russell Crowe’s body mass index? Mr. DiCaprio, playing a high-strung C.I.A. operative named Roger Ferris, once again shows his commitment to full employment for dialect coaches, following the mock-Afrikaans of “Blood Diamond” and the South Boston braying of “The Departed” with some good-old-boy inflections that are helpfully identified by Mr. Crowe’s character as originating in North Carolina.
Mr. Crowe, meanwhile, plays Ferris’s supervisor, Ed Hoffman, who lives somewhere around Washington and has no specified regional background to explain his odd little drawl. At times Mr. Crowe, showing the linguistic chameleonism that is the birthright of every Australian actor, spits out his words with an emphatic twanginess that suggests, if not George W. Bush himself, then perhaps Jon Stewart impersonating Mr. Bush. It’s possible that this resemblance is meant to imply a parallel between the president and Hoffman, who is immune to self-doubt and allergic to second thoughts about the righteousness of his actions.
And also, it appears, to exercise (unlike the president). With an unusual display of impish delight, Mr. Crowe throws himself into the physicality of his character, a schlubby, tubby suburban dad whose near-parodic commitment to domestic routine contrasts amusingly with his professional fanaticism. Using a hands-free cellphone, Hoffman orchestrates elaborate schemes and double-crosses while going about his daily paterfamilias business: loading his kids into the minivan, helping his young son in the bathroom and tearing open a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers on the sidelines of his daughter’s soccer game.
On the phone, and in his occasional surprise visits to Ferris in the field, Hoffman is fighting a war whose terms he lays out in a few set-piece speeches. The gist is that no one is innocent and that the ends justify the means. Deceit, torture, the sacrifice of non-American lives — all is permissible in the fight against a shadowy superjihadist named Al-Saleem (Alon Aboutboul), head of a network carrying out suicide attacks around Europe. The contradictions and unintended consequences of Hoffman’s tactics are borne by Ferris, who finds his credibility undermined, his friends and colleagues at risk and his life in danger.
All of which would be fine if “Body of Lies” — with a screenplay by William Monahan (“The Departed”) and based on a novel by David Ignatius, a columnist at The Washington Post — were clearer about its themes or its plot. As it is, the movie is a hodgepodge of borrowings and half-cooked ideas, flung together into a feverishly edited jet-setting exercise in purposeless intensity. Place names flash onto the screen — Amman! Amsterdam! Langley! — and shiny black S.U.V.’s and Mercedes sedans screech through teeming streets or kick up dust clouds on empty desert roads. From time to time an orange fireball erupts, and everything shows up on the satellite surveillance screens back at headquarters.
In Jordan, Ferris flirts with Aisha (Golshifteh Farahani), an Iranian refugee who works as a nurse and who has even less of an organic relation to the narrative than poor Vera Farmiga did in “The Departed.” The dramatic — I daresay the erotic — center of “Body of Lies” is an all-male triangle involving Ferris, Hoffman and Hani (Mark Strong), the head of Jordanian intelligence. Mr. Strong, also seen in the similar and superior “Syriana,” is a marvel of exotic suavity and cool insinuation. Hani calls Ferris “my dear” and may be more sincere in his affection than the ideologically driven Hoffman, who refers to his younger colleague more generically as “buddy.”
If the psychological tensions linking these three were allowed time and space to develop, “Body of Lies” might have been a more surprising and interesting specimen of its genre. Instead, it throws out a few gestures toward topicality — an opening quote from the W. H. Auden poem that flew around the Internet just after 9/11; glances toward Gitmo and the Green Zone; an awkward dinner-table spat about American foreign policy — without saying much of anything. Mr. Scott’s professionalism is, as ever, present in every frame and scene, but this time it seems singularly untethered from anything like zeal, conviction or even curiosity.
Gambling With a Return to the Mideast
Leonardo DiCaprio in the film “Body of Lies.”
LOS ANGELES
A War on Every Screen (October 28, 2007)
Tough Marketing Calls for a Film Linked to War (April 2, 2008)
Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of “Body of Lies”.
TO paraphrase the old Vietnam-era bumper sticker: What if they gave a war movie and nobody came?
That American moviegoers are allergic to matters revolving around Iraq and the war on terror has become a pillar of wisdom. Films like “Rendition” and “Redacted” have floundered at the box office, as have movies only tangentially linked to the conflict (like “The Kite Runner,” set in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan). The one bona fide hit with a link to the Mideast has been the stoner comedy “Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.”
But what if you gathered two of the world’s biggest movie stars, one of its most celebrated directors, an Oscar-winning screenwriter and a novel and threw them all at the seemingly intractable craziness of the Middle East?
The results of just such a gamble will be determined beginning Friday, when Warner Brothers releases Ridley Scott’s “Body of Lies.” With Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio interpreting a script by William Monahan (“The Departed”), “Body of Lies” puts on prominent display deceptions, betrayals and dispensable attitudes toward humanity that might be essential to United States intelligence work overseas, but that seem particularly challenging at a time when studios appear happy to mollify audiences with hormone-based comedies and superhero epics.
It’s true that some classics of American cinema, like “Chinatown” and the “Godfather” films, have taken the darkest view of power and human nature. But those films come out of a Hollywood that seems long gone. “Body of Lies” is as nostalgic in its moral ambiguity as it is immediate in its subject matter.
At the center of the film is Roger Ferris (Mr. DiCaprio), an up-and-coming C.I.A. operative with the handicap of a conscience and the assignment of tracking down a bin Laden-like terrorist named al-Saleem (Alon Aboutboul). While Ferris dodges bullets, bombs and his own pangs of guilt, his handler, Ed Hoffman (a corpulent Mr. Crowe), is seen mostly in the context of American domestic tranquillity. He takes his kid to the bathroom. He attends a school soccer game. He walks his lawn in a bathrobe. All the while dictating his agent’s next move via cellphone.
“Hoffman is really an American archetype,” Mr. Monahan said. “He really is: Hoffman, the American bureaucrat who never does anything right and never gets punished for it. You can put him anywhere you like — executive, editor, your boss down at the sewer department. One of those guys who manages to rise and rise while never actually accomplishing anything. He doesn’t reflect the C.I.A. He’s not a C.I.A. archetype. I think he’s an American archetype. I quite like him.”
Whether audiences will be drawn to him is another story. But the subject of “Body of Lies” seems custom-made for Mr. Scott, whose films — which include “Blade Runner,” “Black Hawk Down” and three movies with Mr. Crowe (“Gladiator,” “A Good Year” and “American Gangster”) — often involve landscapes in which the director’s visual virtuosity can be exercised. Occasionally they feature situations in which perception is amorphous and good intentions are thwarted. “Isn’t that the world?” Mr. Scott said, laughing. “Isn’t that everything? And that’s just this week.”
“For me,” Mr. Scott added, “the film is about their dance of seduction, betrayal, deceit, and layers and levels of it. But it could have happened anytime in the last 35 years, going back into Beirut. Or it could be the cold war. Berlin during the Marshall Plan. It could be ‘The Third Man,’ ” he said, referring to the 1949 film so jaded in it its worldview that it might be set in silver.
“How close is cynicism to the truth?” he asked. “They’re almost on the same side of the line. Cynicism will lead you to the truth. Or vice versa.”
Donald De Line, a producer of the movie, said the project recalled the great espionage films of the ’70s, like ‘Three Days of the Condor.” “Yes, the Middle East is a hotbed of political unrest and has been for hundreds of years. But that’s not the reason we were attracted to it.”
“What attracted us,” he added, “is that it’s a taut, provocative spy thriller with elements that certainly appeal to me as a producer and Ridley as filmmaker. You’re in a world where a character’s job is deception, when your life and your job are about deception. What’s fascinating is how that bleeds into other areas of your life.”
Yet audiences’ current aversion to such Iraq-related films still looms over the project. “You can’t ignore it, of course,” Mr. De Line said, even while protesting that the film really isn’t about Iraq. And he’s right; bouncing from Baghdad to Ankara to Washington to Berlin, the story is set primarily in Amman, Jordan, where the trajectories of Ferris, Hoffman and a Jordanian intelligence chief, Hani Salaam (Mark Strong), intersect.
Still, the perception remains. So one thing a filmmaker can do is ratchet up the action, as Peter Berg did in “The Kingdom” last year; there’s far more gunplay in “Body of Lies” the movie than “Body of Lies” the book. And the filmmakers can avoid preachiness, like the kind that sank “Lions for Lambs” despite its star-studded casting of Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.What’s left is marketing. “That’s sort of the studio’s responsibility,” Mr. DiCaprio said, laughing. “We’re all people for hire at the end of the day. If I look at a film and say, ‘Well, yes, these issues are in the forefront of my consciousness,’ like ‘Blood Diamond’ or this one, I say, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting to do a movie about that?’ But again, if it’s not great entertainment, and an audience isn’t affected by it, then it’s a profound waste of time.”
The director Ridley Scott on the set.
Mr. DiCaprio said the filmmakers knew that the more they injected politics into the movie, the less effective it would be. “The most fascinating thing about this movie is the fact that it doesn’t take a political position either way, I don’t think,” he said. “It vilifies everybody.”
As the Hoffman character says several times in the movie, “No one is innocent.”
David Ignatius, the book’s author and a columnist for The Washington Post with extensive foreign experience, echoed Mr. DiCaprio’s sentiments about “Body of Lies.” “It’s not trying to make a political point,” said Mr. Ignatius, whose relationship with Mr. Scott can be traced to an unmade, pre-9/11 project called “The Invisible World” (about a female journalist in the Mideast, to be played by Angelina Jolie). “But if people come out of the movie thinking there are easy answers to these questions, they haven’t got it.”
He praised Mr. Monahan for maintaining his book’s tough point of view, but betrayal and deceit are subjects with which Mr. Monahan was already fascinated. His own aborted project with Mr. Scott, called “Tripoli,” was about United States Gen. William Eaton, the general’s campaign to execute a Middle Eastern coup and his betrayal by the Thomas Jefferson government. Another film close to Mr. Monahan’s heart, not coincidentally, is a story based on the kinds of deception and politics that inform “Body of Lies”: namely, “Lawrence of Arabia.”
“It’s one of my favorite films, and it’s the type of film I like to make,” he said. “Both ‘Lawrence’ and the ‘Tripoli’ script show how democracies sometimes can fail to support their allies. People never really thought about the consequences of pulling out of Vietnam; it was all ‘get out of Vietnam, get out of Vietnam,’ and then millions of people died in the aftermath. In democracies government can move on, and alliances can be broken.”
The fallout from unintended consequences can reverberate on a micro level, too. “David Ignatius said this can happen with agents and their handlers,” Mr. Monahan said. “Someone can work an agent, then switch desks at the C.I.A., and somebody else ends up handling him. Or he becomes less interesting and is left out to dry.”
The filmmakers are hoping that they’re not the ones left out to dry, by a public too angry or exhausted by the Iraq war. The themes of darkness that lie beneath the action, adventure, romance and star power of “Body of Lies” are oddly similar to those animating “The Dark Knight”: ruthlessness, political expediency and moral bankruptcy. The major difference, besides a cape and a Batmobile, may only be geography.“Body of Lies” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has swearing and graphic violence.
BODY OF LIES
Directed by Ridley Scott; written by William Monahan, based on the novel by David Ignatius; director of photography, Alexander Witt; edited by Pietro Scalia; music by Marc Streitenfeld; production designer, Arthur Max; produced by Donald De Line and Mr. Scott; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes.WITH: Leonardo DiCaprio (Roger Ferris), Russell Crowe (Ed Hoffman), Mark Strong (Hani), Golshifteh Farahani (Aisha), Oscar Isaac (Bassam), Simon McBurney (Garland), Alon Aboutboul (Al-Saleem) and Ali Suliman (Omar Sadiki).
Ridley Scott
Gender: Male
Born: November 30, 1937
Birthplace: South Shields, England
Nationality: English
Full Biography
From All Movie Guide: One of the most promising directors of the late '70s, Ridley Scott displayed stylistic flair and remarkable storytelling abilities in such films as The Duellists (1977) and his landmark Alien (1979). Although he remained a respected director on both sides of the Atlantic, his career suffered repeated blows throughout the 1980s and '90s with a series of critical and commercial missteps, beginning with the costly and unsuccessful 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
Born in 1937, in Northumberland, England, Scott was educated at the West Hartlepool College of Art and London's Royal College of Art. After completing his education, he became a set designer for the British Broadcasting Company in the early '60s, eventually getting promoted to director of such popular BBC series as the long-running police adventure Z Cars. With the establishment of his own firm, Ridley Scott Associates, Scott was in on the ground floor of some of the most inventive European TV commercials of the 1970s.
The director's transition to the big screen came with his direction of 1977's The Duellists, a visually striking Napoleonic war film that won the Jury Prize for Best First Feature at the Cannes Film Festival. Further success followed with 1979's Alien, which established Scott as both an important director and a shining knight for horror and sci-fi devotees. In 1982, the director found himself at the center of a storm around his production of Blade Runner. After repeated clashes with studio executives over the film's complex content and downbeat finale, Scott added a voice-over narration and a more positive ending. The results sparked an outcry from film purists, and Blade Runner fell victim to negative reviews and poor box-office results. It wasn't until the early '90s that the director's cut was finally released, theatrically and on video cassette, and the film was recognized as a science fiction masterpiece.
In the meantime, Scott continued to direct such films as the 1986 fantasy Legend, starring Tom Cruise, and 1989's Black Rain, which featured Michael Douglas as a vice cop on a mission to Japan. In 1991, he encountered critical and commercial triumph with Thelma & Louise. Starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, the film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Director for Scott. After the film's success, it seemed that the director could do no wrong. Unfortunately, he did just the opposite with his next project, 1992's 1492: Conquest of Paradise. The film proved to be a complete flop, and for the next few years Scott relinquished his directorial duties in favor of producing such films as Monkey Trouble and The Browning Version (both 1994).
Scott returned to the director's chair in 1996, with White Squall, an action-adventure film set on a boat full of troubled teenage boys. Unfortunately, the film performed poorly among critics and at the box office, and Scott's next feature, G.I. Jane (1997), suffered a similar fate. He then returned to producing, working on the 1997 TV series The Hunger, which was based on the 1983 movie directed by his brother, Tony Scott, who was best-known for such action fare as Top Gun (1986) and Enemy of the State (1998). After producing the 1998 black comedy Clay Pigeons, Scott returned to directing with Gladiator (2000), a Roman epic starring Russell Crowe as its titular hero. Budgeted at 100 million dollars and weighing in at 154 minutes, the film was hailed by some critics who saw it as a return to grand-scale moviemaking, while others saw it as merely overblown. Regardless of the critics' opinions, Gladiator was undoubtedly wildly popular, earning five Oscars, including Best Picture, at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In 2001, Scott applied his icy-cool visual style -- but little else of note -- to Hannibal, the much-anticipated sequel to 1991's Silence of the Lambs. Although the film broke the box-office record for the largest opening weekend for an R-rated film, critics were less than pleased with Hannibal's combination of smug, stuffy disaffection and vomit-bag-worthy gore. Scott's skills as a director of action were better put to the test later that year with Black Hawk Down, the account of the United States' unsuccessful 1993 attempt to take down the regime of a brutal Somalian warlord. Though there was no contesting the helmer's adroit camera and editing choices in the film's visceral, tactically challenging battle scenes, some critics objected to Black Hawk's simplified portrayal of the U.S. military involvement in the region. Still bruised from the tragic events of 9/11, however, the American public lined up in droves for the flag-waving Jerry Bruckheimer production, which would also garner Scott his third Best Director Oscar nomination.
Recoiling from the high-profile prestige projects for a spell, Scott turned his focus to the big-screen adaptation of Matchstick Men, a dysfunctional-con-man tale starring a tic-laden Nicolas Cage as well as up-and-comers Sam Rockwell and Alison Lohman. Though hardly a blockbuster, the heist comedy garnered mixed but generally positive reviews, most noting Scott's ability to evince vivid performances from his trio of actors.
In 2005, the director helmed the would-be epic Crusades historical film Kingdom of Heaven with a Gladiator-esque budget and all-star cast. Unfortunately, the film was a dud both with critics and audiences, so Scott returned to a more intimate kind of storytelling with the 2006 drama A Good Year. The film starred Russell Crowe as a hotshot broker who finds himself in the depths of a life-crisis when he inherits his beloved uncle's estate and discovers that the simple lifestyle it offers may give him more satisfaction than his fast-paced, high-power job. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Education
Location - Hartlepool, England
Russell Crowe
Gender: Male
Born: April 7, 1964
Birthplace: Wellington, New Zealand
Nationality: New Zealander
Full Biography
From All Movie Guide: Though perhaps best-known internationally for playing tough-guy roles in Romper Stomper (1993), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Gladiator (2000), New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe has proven himself equally capable of playing gentler roles in films such as Proof (1991) and The Sum of Us (1992). No matter what kind of characters he plays, Crowe's weather-beaten handsomeness and gruff charisma combine to make him constantly watchable: his one-time Hollywood mentor Sharon Stone has called him "the sexiest guy working in movies today."
Born in Wellington, New Zealand, on April 7, 1964, Crowe was raised in Australia from the age of four. His parents made their living by catering movie shoots, and often brought Crowe with them to work; it was while hanging around the various sets that he developed a passion for acting. After making his professional debut in an episode of the television series Spyforce when he was six, Crowe took a 12-year break from professional acting, netting his next gig when he was 18. In film, he had his first major roles in such dramas as The Crossing (1990) and Jocelyn Moorhouse's widely praised Proof (1991) (for which he won an Australian Film Institute award). He then went on to gain international recognition for his intense, multi-layered portrayal of a Melbourne skinhead in Geoffrey Wright's controversial Romper Stomper (1992), winning another AFI award, as well as an Australian Film Critics award.
It was Sharon Stone who helped bring Crowe to Hollywood to play a gunfighter-turned-preacher opposite her in Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead (1995). Though the film was not a huge box-office success, it did open Hollywood doors for Crowe, who subsequently split his time between the U.S. and Australia. In 1997, the actor had his largest success to date playing volatile cop Bud White in Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997). Following the praise surrounding both the film and his performance in it, Crowe found himself working steadily in Hollywood, starring in two films released in 1999: Mystery, Alaska and The Insider. In the latter, he gave an Oscar-nominated lead performance as Jeffrey Wigand, a real-life tobacco industry employee whose personal life was dragged through the mud when he chose to blow the whistle on his former company's questionable business practices.
In 2000, however, Crowe finally crossed over into the public's consciousness with, literally, a tour de force performance in Ridley Scott's glossy Roman epic Gladiator. The Dreamworks/Universal co-production was a major gamble from the outset, devoting more than 100 million dollars to an unfinished script (involving the efforts of at least half a dozen writers), an untested star (stepping into a role originally intended for Mel Gibson), and an all-but-dead genre (the sword-and-sandals adventure). Thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign and mostly positive notices, however, the public turned out in droves the first weekend of the film's release, and kept coming back long into the summer for Gladiator's potent blend of action, grandeur, and melodrama -- all anchored by Crowe's passionate man-of-few-words performance.
Anticipation was high, then, for the actor's second 2000 showing, the hostage drama Proof of Life. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the widely publicized affair between Crowe and his co-star Meg Ryan, the film failed to generate much heat during the holiday box-office season, and attention turned once again to the actor's star-making role some six months prior. In an Oscar year devoid of conventionally spectacular epics, Gladiator netted 12 nominations in February 2001, including one for its lead performer. While many wags viewed the film's eventual Best Picture victory as a fluke, the same could not be said for Crowe's Best Actor victory: nudging past such stiff competition as Tom Hanks and Ed Harris, Crowe finally nabbed a statue, affirming for Hollywood the talent that critics had first noticed almost ten years earlier.
Crowe's 2001 role as real-life Nobel Prize-winning schizophrenic mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. brought the actor back into the Oscar arena. Directed by Ron Howard and co-starring Jennifer Connelly, A Beautiful Mind was criticized for omitting the more sordid and unsightly details of Nash's troubled marriage and decent into mental illness. Still, Crowe's sensitive portrayal, coupled with Howard's assured direction, put the actor back on the mountain of fame that he had previously conquered with Gladiator. A Beautiful Mind quickly vaulted past the 100-million-dollar mark as it took home Golden Globes for Best Picture, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, and Actor and racked up eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor nod for Crowe.
Crowe followed up A Beautiful Mind in 2003 by taking to the high-seas in the period-adventure Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. A hit at the box-office, the film also recieved rave reviews and a number of Oscar nods, including one for Best Picture. His career momentum higher than ever, Crowe next starred in 2005's Depression-era boxing drama Cinderella Man. Reteaming him with A Beautiful Mind's director Ron Howard, the picture garnered Crowe more accolades from critics, and had people talking about another Oscar for the actor. While the Oscar nominations didn't end up including his name, he soon followed up his performance with another dramatic role in Ridley Scott's A Good Year. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Leonardo DiCaprio
Gender: Male
Born: November 11, 1974
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
Nationality: American
Full Biography
From All Movie Guide: As the blond, blue-eyed icon for millions of teenage girls and more than a few boys everywhere, Leonardo DiCaprio emerged from relative television obscurity to become perhaps the hottest under-30 actor of the 1990s. After leading roles in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and James Cameron's Titanic, the actor became a phenomenon, spawning legions of websites and an entire industry built around his name.
Born in the town that would later make him famous, DiCaprio came into the world on November 11, 1974, in Hollywood, CA. The son of a German immigrant mother and an underground comic book artist father who separated shortly after his birth, DiCaprio was raised by both of his parents, who encouraged his early interest in acting. At the age of two and a half, the fledgling performer had his first brush with notoriety and workplace ethics when he was kicked off the set of Romper Room for what the show's network deemed "uncontrollable behavior." After this rather inauspicious start to his career, DiCaprio began to hone his skills -- and, presumably, his professional behavior -- with summer courses in performance art while he was in elementary school. He also joined the Mud People, an avant-garde theater group, with which he performed in Los Angeles, earning the title of "The Littlest Mud Person."
In high school, DiCaprio acted in his first real play and began doing commercials, educational films, and the occasional stint on the Saturday morning show The New Lassie. In 1990, after securing his first full-time agent at the age of 15, DiCaprio landed a role as a teenage alcoholic on the daytime drama Santa Barbara. He also continued to appear on other TV shows, such as The Outsiders and Parenthood, and made his film debut in the 1991 horror film Critters 3.
The actor got the first of many big breaks with a recurring role on the weekly sitcom Growing Pains. His portrayal of a homeless boy won him sufficient notice to get him an audition for Michael Caton-Jones' upcoming screen adaptation of Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life. DiCaprio won the film's title role after beating out 400 other young actors and it proved to be his career breakthrough. The 1993 film, and DiCaprio's performance, won raves and the actor further increased the adulation surrounding him when, later that year, he played Johnny Depp's mentally retarded younger brother in Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape. DiCaprio won an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, and at the tender age of 19, found himself being hailed as an actor to watch.
Subsequent roles in three 1995 films, Sam Raimi's Western The Quick and the Dead; Total Eclipse, in which he played the bisexual poet Rimbaud; and The Basketball Diaries, in which he starred as a struggling junkie, all put the actor in the limelight, but it wasn't until the following year that he became a bona fide star. This transition was made possible by his portrayal of Romeo in the hugely popular William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet opposite Claire Danes. The success of the film gave DiCaprio international fame, many lucrative opportunities, and a slew of comparisons to actors such as James Dean.
After starring with Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, and Robert DeNiro (his father in This Boy's Life) in Marvin's Room (1996), DiCaprio was catapulted into the stratosphere of international fame with his starring role in James Cameron's epic about a big boat and an even bigger piece of ice. Starring opposite Kate Winslet in the 1997 smash Titanic, DiCaprio got to be part of film history, as, in addition to being the highest-grossing movie ever, the film garnered 14 Oscar nominations, winning 11, including Best Picture and Best Director. DiCaprio's much discussed exclusion from the nominations did nothing to hurt his popularity, and somewhat ironically, he next chose to parody his own celebrity with an appearance in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) as a badly behaved movie star.
After displaying his nastier side, he won back the hearts of teens everywhere with his title role in the same year's swashbuckler The Man in the Iron Mask. The film allowed him to explore his good and bad side, as well as the perils of bad wigs, playing twins alongside such older and well-respected personages as Jeremy Irons, Gabriel Byrne, John Malkovich, and Gérard Depardieu. Following the commercial success of the film, DiCaprio went in a completely different direction, with a lead role in Danny Boyle's screen adaptation of Alex Garland's novel The Beach. The film met with eager anticipation from its first day of shooting, as Leo fans everywhere waited with baited breath to see what kind of impression their golden child would next make on the film world; unfortunately, the muddled Beach drew neither praise nor box-office success. DiCaprio pushed forward with an appearance in the small independent film Don's Plum (2001). Cast alongside future Spider-Man Tobey Maguire, the film followed a rambling group of young adults as they made their way through city streets in search of a good time. Drawing fairly lukewarm reviews overseas, the obscure film would ultimately be relegated to a curiousity for stateside audiences as DiCaprio and Maguire sued to prevent a U.S. release of the film.
These initial post-Titanic roles, however, could be considered a regrouping before DiCaprio regained his status as one of the rare young actors who could command both commercial and critical success. He began collaborating with another famous Italian-American in the industry, Martin Scorsese, for the epic Gangs of New York (2002), in which DiCaprio was cast as the protagonist in a tale of gangland violence in early America. Long marred in rumors of disagreement between director Scorsese and producer Harvey Weinstein regarding the film's running time, the film that was originally to be released in December of 2001 was finally delivered to audiences in time for the 2002 holiday/Oscar season.
As if Scorsese's massive crime epic wasn't quite enough to give audiences their fill of DiCaprio, moviegoers got yet another dose of the tireless actor with the release of Steven Spielberg's Catch Me if You Can (2002). A decidedly lighthearted effort from the director who had recently labored on such high-concept sci-fi films as A.I. (2001) and Minority Report (2002), Catch Me if You Can told the true-life tale of Frank Abagnale, Jr., a scam artist so effective that he eluded authorities while assuming a number of high-profile false identities and racking-up over $2.5 million in fraudulent checks while jet-setting in twenty-six countries. Where his work in Gangs seemed a bit leaden, his fleet-footed, cocky turn in Catch played better with audiences and critics, although he would not receive Oscar nods for either film.
Two years later he reteamed with Martin Scorsese, earning some of the best reviews of his career as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Actor playing the young Howard Hughes in The Aviator. Tapping into an energy that was lacking in Gangs, DiCaprio and Scorsese would both achieve further heights two years later with The Departed, a crime drama in which DiCaprio played an undercover cop trying to bring down criminal Jack Nicholson. Doubling up during Oscar season yet again, that same year he played the lead in Edward Zwick's The Blood Diamond, as an Afrikaner who must team up with a South African mercenary in order to find a rare gem of great value to both of them. Both films opened to praise and box-office success, resulting in dual Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor -- Drama. Perhaps pushing its luck, Warner Bros. -- the studio behind both films -- campaigned DiCaprio for a lead Oscar in Diamond and a supporting one in Departed; Oscar voters only nominated him for Diamond.
The hybrid-car driving DiCaprio has also been an outspoken proponent of environmentalism, a topic he is so passionate about he was allowed to interview then President Bill Clinton on the issue in a 2000 televised prime-time special. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Education
Location - Los Angeles, CA
Location - Los Angeles, CA
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