Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (born November 11, 1974) is an American actor and film producer. DiCaprio, an only child, was born in Los Angeles, California. His German-born mother, Irmelin (nee Indenbirken), is a former legal secretary, and his father, George DiCaprio, is an underground comic artist and producer/distributor of comic books. DiCaprio's mother moved from Oer-Erkenschwick at the Ruhr, Germany, to the U.S. during the 1950s, while DiCaprio's father is a fourth-generation American of half Italian (from the Naples area) and half German descent (from Bavaria). DiCaprio's maternal grandmother, Helene Indenbirken (1915-2008), who was born Yelena Smirnova, was a Russian immigrant to Germany.
DiCaprio's parents met while attending college and subsequently moved to Los Angeles. He was named Leonardo because his pregnant mother was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in a museum in Italy when DiCaprio first kicked. DiCaprio was raised Catholic. His parents divorced when he was a year old and he lived mostly with his mother.
DiCaprio and his mother lived in several Los Angeles neighborhoods, such as Echo Park, and at 1874 Hillhurst Avenue, Los Feliz district (which was later converted into a local public library), while his mother worked several jobs to support them. He attended Seeds Elementary School and graduated from John Marshall High School a few blocks away, after attending the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies for four years.
Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom "Growing Pains" (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heart-throb in the 1990s, as the hunky lead actor in movies such as Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997), to then become a leading man in Hollywood blockbusters, made by internationally renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan. But such a rich, varied career is what you would expect from someone who has had such an unusual upbring as DiCaprio.
Leonardo DiCaprio is the only child of former comic book artist George DiCaprio and Irmelin DiCaprio (both born 1943). Leonardo's father, George, had achieved minor status as an artist and distributor of cult comic book titles, and was even depicted in several issues of American Splendor, the cult semi-autobiographical comic book series by the late 'Harvey Pekar', a friend of George's. However, Leonardo's performance skills became obvious to his parents early on, and after signing him up with a talent agent who wanted Leonardo to perform under the stage name "Lenny Williams", DiCaprio began appearing on a number of television commercials and educational programs. DiCaprio began attracting the attention of producers, who cast him in bit part roles in a number of TV programs, such as "Roseanne" (1988) and "The New Lassie" (1989), but it wasn't until 1991 that DiCaprio made his film debut in Critters 3 (1991), a low-budget horror movie.
While Critters 3 (1991) did little to help showcase DiCaprio's acting abilities, it did help him develop his show-reel, and attract the attention of the people behind the hit sitcom "Growing Pains" (1985), in which Leonardo was cast in the "Cousin Oliver" role of a young homeless boy who moves in with the Seavers. While DiCaprio's stint on "Growing Pains" (1985) was very short, as the sitcom was axed the year after he joined, it helped bring DiCaprio into the public's attention and, after the show ended, DiCaprio began auditioning for roles in which he would get the chance to prove his acting chops. Leonardo took up a diverse range of roles in the early 1990s, including a mentally challenged youth in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), a young gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead (1995) and a drug addict in one of his most challenging roles to date, "Jim Carroll", in The Basketball Diaries (1995), a role which the late River Phoenix originally expressed interest in.
While these diverse roles helped establish Leonardo's reputation as an actor, it wasn't until his role as "Romeo" in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) that Leonardo became a household name, a true movie star. The following year, DiCaprio starred in another movie about doomed lovers, Titanic (1997), which went on to beat all box office records held before then, as, at the time, Titanic (1997) became the highest grossing movie of all time, and cemented DiCaprio's reputation as a teen heart-throb.
Following his work on Titanic (1997), DiCaprio kept a low profile for a number of years, with roles in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998/I) and the low-budget The Beach (2000/I) being some of his few notable roles during this period. However, in 2002, he burst back into screens throughout the world with leading roles in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Gangs of New York (2002), his first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorsese.
With a current salary of $20 million a movie, DiCaprio is now one of the biggest movie stars in the world. However, he has not limited his professional career to just acting in movies, as DiCaprio is a committed environmentalist, who is actively involved in many environmental causes, and his commitment to this issue led to his involvement in The 11th Hour, a documentary movie about the state of the natural environment.
As someone who has gone from bit parts in television commercials to one of the most respected actors in the world, DiCaprio has had one of the most diverse careers in cinema. DiCaprio continues to defy conventions about the types of roles he will accept, and with his career now seeing him leading all star casts in action thrillers such as The Departed, Shutter Island and Christopher Nolan's Inception, DiCaprio continues to wow audiences by refusing to conform to any cliché about actors. DiCaprio is not merely a former teen heart-throb turned leading man, he is one of the most respected, daring and challenging actors working today.
- from IMDB.com
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