Written by Sam Shannon
There is a club that has existed for many years now that is reserved exclusively for the elite of the elite. What club is that? I’ll give you a clue. Past and present members include Elvis, Oprah, Beyoncé, Miley and LeBron. It’s the One Name Club. People who are so unique and famous they are known by just one name. And for about the last twenty years or so a fee-paying member has been a Hollywood heavyweight known simply as Leo.
Leonardo DiCaprio.
Source: Gify
But who is Leonardo DiCaprio? The Oxford English Dictionary defines Leonardo DiCaprio as an Italian painter, scientist and engineer who lived between 1452 and 1519 (N.B. I realised quickly that DiCaprio wasn’t in the dictionary and opted for Leonardo da Vinci instead. Can’t win them all).
Rather than try to answer my own intentionally ambiguous question, through this post I will attempt to investigate what has now become an unkind public opinion: that Leonardo DiCaprio at the relatively young age of 41, should have already won at least one Oscar. It’s a notion that has gathered a huge amount of attention and in my opinion is perhaps a little unfair. Why has Leo become the guy known for not winning an Oscar when the list of other actors who have not yet won an Oscar includes names like Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Joaquin Phoenix, Tom Cruise, Gary Oldman, Edward Norton, Robert Downey Jr. and Will Smith? They are, after all, an incredibly difficult award to win. There’s an unwritten rule that it requires an awful amount of lobbying in order to be even considered for a nomination by the Academy. You need to suck up to the right people, attend the right parties, and most importantly, appear in the right film.
So should Leo really have an Oscar by now? Has he been unfairly treated by the Academy? Or has he simply been nominated in years when his great work didn’t measure up to those who won? I for one want to get to the bottom of this and will do so by launching a three-pronged investigation. The first prong will be to discuss roles that he wasn’t nominated for and decide whether or not that was the correct decision. The second prong will be to discuss the roles that Leo received an Oscar nomination for and decide whether or not he deserved to win. The third and final prong will be to discuss Leo’s latest film The Revenant (it’s been nearly a month since I saw it and I think I’m finally ready) and rate his chances to take home that elusive prize.
PRONG ONE: WHAT ABOUT ME?
After careful consideration I’ve decided these are the Leo roles that deserved a closer look from the Academy.
1993 – This Boy’s Life
In one of his earliest roles, DiCaprio starred opposite the great Robert De Niro and held his own. Leo plays the role of a young Tobias Wolff (a real life writer and literature professor) who endures an abusive relationship with his new stepfather (De Niro, in blistering form). Believe it or not this is the theatrical trailer, which is essentially the movie neatly condensed into two minutes. Obviously made by the same people who made the Southpaw trailer. No, I’m still not over it.
Did he deserve a nomination?
To be honest, probably not. Despite holding his own in scenes with one of the greatest actors of all time, and at such a young age, De Niro’s performance is the superior of the two.
1995 – The Basketball Diaries
DiCaprio plays another real life person, this time poet Jim Carroll. The film tells the story of Carroll’s teenage years when he was a promising high school basketball player who free falls into the world of drug addiction and crime.
Did he deserve a nomination?
This was a fairly weak year for the Best Actor category with Nicholas Cage, yes Nicholas Cage, winning for Leaving Las Vegas. Other nominees included Anthony Hopkins for Nixon, Sean Penn for Dead Man Walking, Richard Dreyfuss for Mr. Holland’s Opus and Massimo Troisi for Il Postino. I think that Leo probably should have been nominated for this role purely for this scene alone.
That was really heavy. If you watched all of that, here’s a video of a Pomeranian sneezing to perk you back up again.
1997 – Titanic
Not much needs to be said here. This was the movie that thrust DiCaprio into the stratosphere.
Did he deserve a nomination?
In this case the other nominees don’t even need to be mentioned. This was a career-defining movie star performance, but in critical terms, it wasn’t anything extraordinary. Happy to move on.
2002 – Gangs of New York
First collaboration with Martin Scorsese also starred Daniel Day-Lewis and Cameron Diaz. Leo plays Amsterdam Vallon a man seeking revenge against his father’s killer.
Did he deserve a nomination?
Not here. Day-Lewis scored the surprising Best Actor nomination instead of Supporting Actor, eventually losing to Adrien Brody for his role in The Pianist.
2002 – Catch Me If You Can
This is a cracking film directed by Steven Spielberg and co-starring Tom Hanks. DiCaprio plays Frank Abagnale Jr., a young man who swindled millions of dollars by posing as a pilot, doctor and lawyer.
Did he deserve a nomination?
Yes, it’s a great leading man performance. Although he would have found stiff competition from Adrien Brody in The Pianist, Nicholas Cage (again!) in Adaptation, Michael Caine in The Quiet American, Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt and his aforementioned Gangs of New York co-star Daniel Day-Lewis. Interestingly, Hanks didn’t receive a Supporting Actor nod here either, the only Catch Me If You Can cast member to receive an acting nomination was…Christopher Walken! I’m officially okay with this.
2006 – The Departed
Another Scorsese collaboration that featured a cast stacked full of Hollywood superstars: DiCaprio, Nicholson, Damon, Wahlberg and Baldwin.
Did he deserve a nomination?
Yeah this is a no brainer, DiCaprio is the stand out here. He actually did receive a Best Actor nomination this year but for a different film. More on that later. Wahlberg was the only one with an acting nod here receiving a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
2008 – Revolutionary Road
The film that reunited DiCaprio with his most famous co-star Kate Winslet didn’t quite have the same vibe to it as Titanic. This film revolves around a married couple living in suburbia struggling to overcome a myriad of problems. Michael Shannon (incidentally a different Michael Shannon to my dad) came away with a deserved Best Supporting Actor nomination.
Did he deserve a nomination?
Tough year to crack into the Best Actor category for Leo with Sean Penn taking home the award for Milk and the other nominees being Richard Jenkins for The Visitor, Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler. Probably could have edged out Pitt or Langella when you take scenes like this into consideration. Buckle up.
2012 – Django Unchained
This was an exciting role for Leo to take on. Not only did he get the chance to be in a Tarantino film, he also got the chance to play the villain of a Tarantino film. Calvin Candie is one of the most despicable characters ever seen on the big screen and DiCaprio played him with a crazed intensity. From this film comes the now infamous story of DiCaprio cutting his hand during a pivotal scene and refusing to ask for a cut. Commitment level was through the roof on this one. Watch him notice his bleeding hand at about the 30 second mark and continue on in this extraordinary scene.
Did he deserve a nomination?
DiCaprio would have found himself in unfamiliar territory at this stage of his career had he been nominated, the Best Supporting Actor category. Other nominees this year included Alan Arkin for Argo, Robert De Niro for Silver Linings Playbook, Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master, Tommy Lee Jones for Lincoln and his Django Unchained co-star Christoph Waltz who was crowned the winner. I think he definitely deserved to be nominated and it would have been quite rare for two people to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the same film. Should have pushed out Tommy Lee Jones.
PRONG TWO: CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR
1993 – Best Supporting Actor nomination for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
The other nominees were as follows:
Tommy Lee Jones – The Fugitive (WINNER)
Ralph Fiennes – Schindler’s List
John Malkovich – In the Line of Fire
Pete Postlethwaite – In the Name of the Father
Did he deserve to win?
We’re early on in the second prong of this investigation and have already discovered an egregious mistake. Did Tommy Lee Jones really win an Oscar for The Fugitive? Not only did he win, he beat out four superior performances to do it. Leo deserves this one, and it’s not even that close. Gilbert Grape was a childhood favourite of me and my sisters because it was the midday movie at least once every school holidays, so I’m very familiar with the film and the performance. For Leo to play a developmentally disabled young boy so convincingly was quite a feat especially for someone so young. Fiennes was terrifying as Amon Göth, Malkovich was in typical form as he antagonised Clint Eastwood and the late Pete Postlethwaite tugged on the heart strings as an innocent man sent to prison alongside his son but let’s face it, Leo was robbed! Only thing I can think of is that voters didn’t want to award an Oscar to a relatively unknown actor so early on in his career.
2004 – Best Actor nomination for The Aviator
The other nominees were as follows:
Jamie Foxx – Ray (WINNER)
Don Cheadle – Hotel Rwanda
Johnny Depp –Finding Neverland
Clint Eastwood – Million Dollar Baby
Did he deserve to win?
In a word? No. In a few more words? Jamie Foxx wins this no matter what. He was just too good as Ray Charles. If something miraculous happened and Foxx didn’t win, I think Clint may have won for sentimental reasons. It just wasn’t Leo’s year.
2006 – Best Actor nomination for Blood Diamond
The other nominees were as follows:
Forest Whitaker – The Last King of Scotland (WINNER)
Ryan Gosling – Half Nelson
Peter O’Toole – Venus
Will Smith – The Pursuit of Happyness
Did he deserve to win?
Unfortunately Leo would have had a better chance if he was pushed for his role in The Departed but I think the people behind that film weren’t sure who the lead actor was out of DiCaprio, Damon and Nicholson. Don’t get me wrong, Leo was great in Blood Diamond and he did a really good job of tackling the notoriously tricky South African accent. Unfortunately, this was another year where he was easily beaten by a superior performance. Forest Whitaker’s portrayal of the monstrous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was one of the best performances of at least the last 15 years and very much deserved to win.
2013 – Best Actor nomination for The Wolf of Wall Street
The other nominees were as follows:
Matthew McConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club (WINNER)
Christian Bale – American Hustle
Bruce Dern – Nebraska
Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years a Slave
Did he deserve to win?
This is a really tricky one. This was always going to come down to McConaughey v DiCaprio and I personally would have been happy if either of them went home with the award. I think in the end what pushed McConaughey over the line was a combination of three factors. Firstly, there was the stunning physical transformation that he went through for his role of Ron Woodruff, losing a huge amount of weight for the film. Secondly, Dallas Buyers Club was the apex of the McConaissance which was a nauseating way of saying that McConaughey had decided to stop making shit movies (although Seeds On Ground contributor Adrian Coburn ranks Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in his top three movies of all-time). And finally, DiCaprio was incredible in Wolf, he carried the film with a ridiculous amount of confidence and charisma but it didn’t seem like he was doing something completely new for him. We’d seen him act manic and frenzied plenty of times, in fact there are YouTube videos dedicated to him doing exactly that. McConaughey took a real risk with Dallas Buyers Club, it was something we had never seen him do and when you consider the first two factors, it was a well deserved win. Could have done without his acceptance speech though, that was a stinker.
PRONG THREE: THE REVENANT
The Revenant, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu is a film that focuses on one man’s incredible journey to track down and seek revenge on the man who abandoned him and left him for dead. As this is a film still playing in theatres, that’s all the details that will be given in terms of plot. DiCaprio recently earned his fifth Oscar nomination for playing Hugh Glass, a 19th century trapper forced to confront unthinkable circumstances and a devastating wilderness.
The Revenant has already become infamous for its arduous shoot due to Iñárritu’s insistence on using natural light and his wish to shoot the film in-sequence. Many crew members were either fired or quit during production, unable or unwilling to meet the expectations of the ambitious auteur. How ever it was made, the end result was an astonishing achievement.
Now here is a film where DiCaprio is doing something that we have never seen from him before. He crawls, drags, scrapes, cries and groans his way through the film in a performance that leaves the audience feeling like they have endured what his Hugh Glass endures over the course of the two and a half hour epic. One scene in particular involving a bear, a scene that by now you’re probably familiar with, is one of the most stunning sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie. It’s a remarkable feat of filmmaking and puts me in the strange situation of desperately wanting to know how it was achieved and at the same time hoping I never find out. Despite the genius way in which it was created and the beautiful, powerful and taxing film that it is, its DiCaprio’s performance which is at its centre. We go where he takes us. He carries the film in a way that he never quite has before because the role demands him to give more of a physical performance than anything else. Barely speaking for the entire duration of the film, when he does open his mouth it’s in a course whisper that commands your attention and leaves you hanging on every painful syllable.
When The Revenant released its first theatrical trailer there was a cynical opinion circulating that DiCaprio was now going to seemingly outrageous lengths to claim that elusive Oscar. Let’s really think about that for a second. Now I don’t ever put myself in a position where I start feeling sorry for Leonardo DiCaprio, because this is a man who has been the subject of articles where the headline literally reads: ‘Leonardo DiCaprio Flies High Above Ocean on Jet Pack’, and ‘Leonardo DiCaprio Leaves Club With 20 Women’, but I do think that he deserves a little more credit. Is he putting himself through months and months of miserable conditions for a gold statue that in the grand scheme of things doesn’t mean an awful lot? Or is he doing it because he sees it as the single biggest creative challenge of his career and the chance to work with a director who is currently operating at a level few in history have? I’ll leave that one for you to decide. Now…
Will he win?
The other nominees are as follows:
Bryan Cranston – Trumbo
Matt Damon – The Martian
Michael Fassbender – Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne – The Danish Girl
Yes. A lot of the Oscars up for grabs are still very much an open race, but Leo has had the Best Actor category sewn up for several weeks. Has he been better before? Maybe. But like so many winners before him it’s a case of right film, right role, right time. Leo will win. Put your house on it.
There you have it. Our deep dive into the career of Leonardo DiCaprio has reached its end and I think we’ve all learnt something valuable. That yes, Leo probably should have won an Oscar by now, but that on February 28th any wrong should hopefully be put right. Let’s just be thankful that we have someone like Leo to enjoy, a transcendent talent who will hopefully be creating incredible work for many, many more years to come.
Source: Reddit
See you next time.
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