Those
Eyes...That Face...
At
first sight, with the blond hair and boyish looks, it was easy to dismiss actor
Leonardo
DiCaprio as a chocolate-faced mush-type actor. Boy, were we wrong...
He's
HOT. But there's more to actor and Hollywood sensation Leonardo DiCaprio than
his classic good looks and a smile that shoots straight at your heart. It lies
in his excellence as an actor and the ability to switch between playing the boy
and the man with equal comfort.
He's
brilliant as the smooth-talking charmer, in Steven Spielberg's 'Catch Me If You
Can'. Only Leo could've played that misguided youth - lonely and troubled - to
perfection. Watch him in 'The Aviator' as the larger-than-life Howard Hughes and
you can feel the genius with his desire for bigger, faster things and his
obsessive personality bordering on lunacy. A stunning performance got him the
Best Actor in a Drama award at this year's Golden Globe Awards.
He
is a hell of a serious actor. To play Howard Hughes' character with
obsessive-compulsive disorder, Leo explored his own mild disorders. To prepare
for Arnie Grape in 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape?' (a role that brought him an
Oscar nomaination), a very young Leo studied autistic children while visiting
homes for the autistic. If that isn't dedication, we don't know what is!
Being
the teen heartthrob that he is, Leo could've easily done a string of
commercially popular movies and added to his hit list, but the guy prefers to
select his films carefully. Has turned down roles like Robin in 'Batman Forever'
and preferred taking up challenging dark roles in 'Basketball Diaries', 'Total
Eclipse', 'Gangs Of New York' and of course that of Howard Hughes in 'The
Aviator'.
