Leonardo DiCaprio Interviews: Rolling Stone and More

Rare is the interview where Leonardo DiCaprio talks about much more than his film roles, yet he opens up in an interview with Rolling Stone called Hanging with Leo, with photos by Mark Seliger. Leo talks about his early days in Hollywood to irrational fears, even though he has a "well-organized life" and puts a lot of thought into the things he does. He relates how he had a somewhat belligerent attitude in his youth and describes himself as a punk with a "big mouth." He also talks about a recent near-death experience that happened on an eco-dive off the Galapagos Islands. "I was trying to get footage with a rinky-dink camera," Leonardo tells Rolling Stone, "I looked down, because I was exerting myself a lot, and I think the tanks weren't fastened properly, and I had, like 40 pounds of pressure." It was a very frightening moment of which he also said "All you think about .... is, like, 'Get me the hell out of this situation'." The interview is in the August 5, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone on sale now, or you can subscribe and read it online. Rolling Stone also has a great slideshow entitled "Leonardo DiCaprio's Life in Photos."

While this interview is getting a lot of buzz for the "shirtless" photo, I also found another interview on TheShortList.com dated July 15, 2010, where Leonardo talked about his early films, What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and one of my favorites, A Boy's Life (1993), describing how fortunate he was to start off working with stars like Johnny Depp and Robert DeNiro. "It was like winning the lottery." That's a fascinating quote from a guy who now makes something like $20 million per film. He must feel like he's won the lottery every time he makes a movie! He also said in this interview it makes no difference to him if you call him "Leo" or "Leonardo."

Earlier in February 2010, in an interview published on Telegraph.uk by John Hiscock, Leo talked about filming Shutter Island (2010): "Usually when I'm on a movie set, I'm able to detach myself from the process at the end of the day and go home and learn my lines for the next day, but this situation was a whole lot different. There were a couple of weeks when I was in a hole and it was the deepest I've ever gone with a character emotionally," he said. About Inception (2010), Leonardo said: "It didn't make much sense to us when we were doing it, and we had to do a ton of detective work to try to figure out what the movie was and what we were doing from day to day, but, thank God, we had somebody who knew what he was doing," referring to the film's creator, Chris Nolan.

In Esquire's February 2010 interview, Leo talked about the nude scene in Revolutionary Road (2008) with Kate Winslet while being directed by her husband, Sam Mendes. He said it didn't feel weird to him because he knew Kate before she met Sam, abut when the scene was about to begin, Kate asked them if they were okay, and he and Sam said "Yeah, we're totally fine." Kate said, "It's even weirder that you're both totally fine." This entire interview is not online but a lot of quotes from it are in a photo slideshow that's super.

For a comprehensive list of interviews and articles about Leonard DiCaprio before 2010, visit the Interviews and Articles page of MyLeoMania.com.

Sources: Embedded
IMDB.com: Leonardo DiCaprio