Jul 28, 2010 04:38 PM
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Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio(born November 11, 1974)[1] is an American actor and film producer.
His first role was on the sitcom Growing Pains, but his breakthrough film performance came in This Boy's Life. This was quickly followed by What's Eating Gilbert Grape his performance as the mentally handicapped brother of Gilbert(Johnny Depp) brought him nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. DiCaprio has also been nominated for two BAFTAs, three SAGs, and seven Golden Globes. He is a Golden Globe and a Silver Bear winner.
He gained international fame for his role as Jack Dawson in Titanic, and has starred in many other successful films including Romeo+ Juliet, Catch Me If You Can, Inception and Blood Diamond, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Another Academy Award nomination came for his role as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorsese. He has also worked with Scorsese in Gangs of New York, The Departed and Shutter Island. This working partnership brought comparison to the earlier working relationship between Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, who also benefited from roles in Scorsese films early in his career.
DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Irmelin(née Indenbirken), a former legal secretary, and George DiCaprio, an underground comic artist and producer/distributor of comic books.[3] His mother moved from Oer-Erkenschwick at the Ruhr, Germany, to the U.S. during the 1950s, [4] while his father is a fourth-generation American of half Italian and half German descent.[1][5][6] His maternal grandmother, Helene Indenbirken, who was born Yelena Smirnova, was a Russian immigrant to Germany.[7] His paternal grandmother, Olga Anne Jacobs, was also German-born.[1][8] DiCaprio's parents met while attending college together and subsequently moved to Los Angeles.[1] 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.[9] His parents divorced when he was a year old and he lived mostly with his mother, although his father was around intermittently. During his childhood, DiCaprio was interested in baseball cards, comic books, and frequently visited museums with his father.
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.[1] 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.
In 2002, DiCaprio starred as an Irish immigrant working for a deadly butcher in Gangs of New York(directed by Martin Scorsese) and as a charismatic young con man and forger in Catch Me If You Can(directed by Steven Spielberg). Both films were very well received by critics. He received Golden Globe nominations for both. Forging a collaboration with Scorsese, the two paired again for a biopic of the eccentric and obsessive American film director and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes in The Aviator, a film that scored DiCaprio a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
DiCaprio continued his run with Scorsese in the 2006 film The Departed as Billy Costigan, a smart undercover cop in Boston. His next film was Blood Diamond, released in December 2006. The film itself received generally favorable reviews[17] and DiCaprio was praised for the authenticity of his South African Afrikaner accent, known as a difficult accent to emulate.[18]
In 2006, the Golden Globes and Broadcast Film Critics Association nominated DiCaprio twice in the same category: Best Actor for Blood Diamond and The Departed. Also in the same year, he received two nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, a lead actor nomination for Blood Diamond and a supporting actor nomination for The Departed. He earned an Oscar nomination for lead actor in Blood Diamond and BAFTA for lead actor for The Departed.
