Starring in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘love letter to an industry’, Leonardo DiCaprio is well placed to reflect on Hollywood’s storied history – as well as its seismic present
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INTERVIEW: SUZY MALOY ADDITIONAL WORDS: CHRIS UJMA
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or all of his years in the movie industry – from a fresh-faced scamp in Titanic and a heartthrob in Romeo & Juliet, through to meaty roles in Inception and The Revenant – Leonardo DiCaprio is a cinematic chameleon; versatility that ensured he finally nabbed that elusive Oscar. Despite the prolific blockbuster hitlist, though, the 44-year-old has curiously never shared the screen with fellow heavyweight Brad Pitt, 55. That remarkable silver screen quirk becomes void this month, when the titans join forces in the release of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino’s ambitious film follows faded television actor Rick Dalton (played by DiCaprio, yet reportedly based on the real-life Burt Reynolds) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt), striving to achieve fame and success in the film industry during the final years of Hollywood’s Golden Age, in 1969 Los Angeles. The director has called it his “most personal” film yet: “I think of it like my memory piece. Alfonso Cuarón had Roma and Mexico City, 1970. I had LA and 1969. This is me. This is the year
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that formed me. I was six years old then. This is my world,” he said. On its Cannes Film Festival showing, it received a six-minute-long standing ovation. “We came around in this industry at the same time, around the 90s,” says DiCaprio, of working with his co-star on the eagerly awaited movie. “Working with Brad was great: we have this intersecting story together in this movie and Brad is an amazing actor and so professional. He is so easy to work with. And if you have that kind of tension lifted, great things can happen.” (For Pitt’s take on the experience, at Cannes he confided to The Playlist that, “I had a great laugh with Leo. It’s that thing knowing you have the best of the best on the opposite side of the table, holding up the scene with you. There is a great relief in that… We have the same reference points. We have been going through this at the same time, with similar experiences to laugh about it. I hope we do it again, it was great fun.”) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood marks Tarantino’s ninth feature outing and, while it marks DiCaprio’s first film alongside Brad, he is no stranger to working with the man behind the camera, having been
