Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, and was raised primarily by his mother after his parents divorced when he was a toddler. His mother, Irmelin, was a legal secretary born in Germany, while his father, George DiCaprio, worked as a comic book artist and distributor. His parents encouraged his early interest in acting and performance.

DiCaprio began appearing in commercials and television programs as a child. He made guest appearances on The New Lassie and Roseanne, then gained a recurring role as Luke Brower on Growing Pains. An agent once suggested that he use the stage name Lenny Williams, but he continued working under his birth name.

DiCaprio made his film debut in the low-budget horror movie Critters 3 in 1991. His early television work also included Parenthood, for which he received a Young Artist Award nomination, and his role on Growing Pains helped bring him wider attention.

His breakthrough came with This Boy’s Life (1993), in which he acted opposite Robert De Niro. He followed it with What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), starring alongside Johnny Depp as a teenager with an intellectual disability. The performance earned DiCaprio an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and established him as a serious young performer.

Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), with Claire Danes as Juliet, made DiCaprio a major teenage star. His performance as Romeo Montague combined a contemporary setting with Shakespearean language and helped establish him as a leading actor in mainstream cinema.

The following year, DiCaprio starred opposite Kate Winslet in James Cameron’s Titanic. He played Jack Dawson, a poor artist who falls in love with the wealthy Rose aboard the doomed ocean liner. Titanic became a worldwide phenomenon, received 14 Academy Award nominations, won 11, and transformed DiCaprio into an international celebrity. Afterward, he appeared in The Man in the Iron Mask and The Beach before returning to major success in 2002 with Catch Me If You Can and Gangs of New York.

DiCaprio’s first film with Martin Scorsese was Gangs of New York (2002), a historical drama set in nineteenth-century New York City. The collaboration continued with The Aviator (2004), in which DiCaprio portrayed aviation pioneer Howard Hughes and received his first Golden Globe for Best Actor.

He and Scorsese reunited for The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). DiCaprio received major acclaim for playing Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. In Killers of the Flower Moon, he portrayed Ernest Burkhart and acted opposite Robert De Niro, who played Burkhart’s uncle William Hale.

DiCaprio played a plantation owner in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012), then portrayed Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (2013). He also starred in Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010), Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar (2011), and Blood Diamond (2006), continuing his preference for complex historical, psychological, and morally conflicted characters.

For The Revenant (2015), DiCaprio played frontiersman Hugh Glass, who struggles to survive after being left for dead in the wilderness. The demanding production involved freezing conditions and extensive physical preparation. His performance earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor in February 2016.

DiCaprio worked with Tarantino again in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019), playing fictional actor Rick Dalton opposite Brad Pitt. He later starred in Don’t Look Up (2021) with Jennifer Lawrence and reunited with Scorsese and De Niro for Killers of the Flower Moon, a crime drama about the murders of Osage people in 1920s Oklahoma.

DiCaprio’s public relationships have included an on-and-off relationship with model Gisele Bündchen from 2000 to 2005 and a relationship with model Bar Refaeli that lasted several years. He was briefly linked to actor Blake Lively in 2011.

He began dating model Vittoria Ceretti in 2023. Other relationships named in biographical accounts include those with models Kelly Rohrbach, Erin Heatherton, Toni Garrn, and Camila Morrone.

Environmental advocacy has been a major part of DiCaprio’s public work. He hosted an Earth Day celebration in 2000 and interviewed former U.S. president Bill Clinton for a television segment about global warming. He wrote, narrated, and produced the environmental documentary The 11th Hour, released in 2007, and later produced and narrated Ice on Fire (2019).

DiCaprio was one of the founders of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, a nonprofit focused on environmental causes. He also served on the boards of organizations including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Global Green USA, the World Wildlife Fund, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.