Leonardo DiCaprio: How Young Does He Look?

Hey, EW.  I’m looking for my facebook profile pic to be professionally photo shopped.  Is your person available?  Leo looks like he’s 21 in this pic.  I’m looking to be about 30?!?

On another note, Leo and Kate sat down for a “candid Q&A” with EW about their on-screen reunion.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are finally back together, and this week’s Entertainment Weekly chats with the two best friends about Oscars, fame, and surviving instant stardom.  More than a decade ago, they stepped aboard Titanic, and now they’ve reunited for Revolutionary Road, and this time it’s a marriage that hits an iceberg.

Hollywood has been panting to rekindle their romance on screen ever since the Titanic became the highest-grossing film of all time.  It wasn’t until Winslet read Richard Yates’ novel Revolutionary Road, a classic tale of ‘50s suburban regret about a young married couple desperate to escape the dreariness of their lives, that she figured a reunion was in order.  How scared were they to mess with the original magic they had on screen?  “Over the years, I would find myself stopping and saying, ‘I don’t know if we should do this again.’  And then I’d think, ‘What are you, an idiot?  Why wouldn’t I want to work with the best actress of her generation?  Am I going to be prejudiced against a project just because Kate’s in it?’  I think we both had been actively looking for something else to do together, but we fundamentally knew that we couldn’t tread on any sort of similar territory,” says DiCaprio.

Throughout the interview with Entertainment Weekly, they’re worried that they will come off as “cutesy”, and even during the sit-down, Winslet reached over at one point and rubbed her finger over DiCaprio’s nose announcing that he has a scratch.  “This is a little too cute.  It’s like out of one of those scenes from When Harry Met Sally…with the old couples.  ‘And I met her in the park in 1992!  And she was …’ ‘Eating a hot dog!’  ‘And I was scratching my butt!’” says DiCaprio.  Winslet then replies “Oh, my God, and look at me fussing over your face.  I’ve literally turned into a combination of your mother, your sister, and, I don’t know what, your wife!”

In Revolutionary Road, their characters have big fights, but neither actors were worried that the scenes could slip into hamminess.  “We have a level of understanding which I really don’t have with another actor that I’ve ever worked with at all,” says Winslet.

While making Titanic was a rigorous process, both Winslet and DiCaprio have a tremendous amount of respect for director James Cameron.  “Making Titanic was very, very hard, and Jim Cameron is an absolute visionary.  Because there was a lot of press around the experience of making Titanic, it’s been very hard for us to talk objectively about it,” says Winslet.  “Because anything that’s said feeds into the ‘Ooh, the controversy surrounding that movie!’  I think we have nothing but respect for Jim when we look back at that experience,” says DiCaprio.  “And it was tough for us to get our heads around.  Jim had to be a certain type of director to make that film work.  He literally had to command an army of people every single day.”  DiCaprio then goes on to add, “By the way, I really hate talking about post-Titanic because it always sounds to me in print like I’m complaining when I have nothing to complain about.  That movie gave both of us tremendous opportunities for what we wanted to do as actors.”

There are countless examples of how sudden fame can permanently destroy a young person in Hollywood, and yet somehow the Titanic stars emerged intact.  “I look back on that time now and I remember thinking, ‘I’m doing okay, I’m absolutely fine.  My life hasn’t changed.  I won’t let it!  I can just walk to the grocery store and buy milk in my pajamas still.  Ahhhh, right, no, I can’t.  I have no idea what the hell is going on or how I’m supposed to deal with suddenly having 10 paparazzi there.  Oh, okay, ohhh, I get it.  Anonymity, that’s gone,’” remembers Winslet.  “I look back and think, ‘Jesus, I was seriously ill-equipped emotionally to be able to cope with all of that stuff.”

When asked about their many Oscar nominations (but no wins), DiCaprio says “I don’t want to jump into the whole cliché about the honor of being nominated, I’m not going there, even though that’s the truth.  I don’t know how to answer – I feel like some people are titled as Oscar-hungry and I would not say that I’m hungry for one.  It’s not something I’ve got to have in my life.”

When Entertainment Weekly asked them at what point they grew comfortable with fame, DiCaprio says, “You never get used to it.  Post-Titanic, it was more intense than anyone our age has ever dealt with in the history of…anything.  It was the modern era of media and paparazzi where they’re organized, with multiple SUVs following you around.  I didn’t know it would at the time, but it has way calmed down in my life.”  Winslet adds: “Also, neither of us court the attention.  We don’t go to every red carpet event, even though we sometimes might actually quite like to go if it was a movie a friend was in.  We live in a time now where the world has so much access to celebrities and their lives and the color of their underwear.”

Do their hearts swell at the sight of someone like Zac Efron or now Twilight’s Robert Pattinson being shot out of Hollywood’s cannon?  “That’s the interesting thing about being an actor,” says DiCaprio.  “You are also a public figure.  Early on I made it my policy that a certain amount of publicity is good – you promote your job, you do your movie, you retain your private life, you don’t divulge everything about yourself.  And when I see younger actors getting a tremendous amount of publicity, I say to myself, Well, they’ve been given an unbelievable opportunity, and I hope they know within themselves that all that really matters at the end of the day is the work.  All this noise and attention will absolutely deteriorate and there will be a new, fresh piece of meat for the media to focus on within less than a year’s time.  So what they should do at this moment is work their assess off to prove to the public and prove to themselves that they can absolutely have a long-term career.”

Speaking of private lives, does DiCaprio ever look at Kate and just think, “Damn, she’s the one who got away.”  After they look at each other and burst out laughing, he says “We’ve always been completely platonic.”

Source: EW