IGN Interview, January, 2000
IGN Movies Big Interview: Leonardo DiCaprio

Part 1: King Leo talks about videogames, eating caterpillars and The Beach.

January 20, 2000


Snake blood still tastes better than Jägermeister.
Warning: Minor spoilers. Like it or not.
In Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio enslaved the heart of every 12-year-old girl, whereas most of us were quite content to see Jack Dawson turn into a human cute-sicle. But now Leo's back with The Beach, a flick more in line with his earlier, better works like A Boy's Life, What's Eating Gilbert Grape and The Basketball Diaries. The Beach (directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting notoriety) is going to break the hearts of all those pre-teens expecting a nice guy: Leo's Richard is real, and real isn't always nice. Luckily for us his luscious co-star, Virginie Ledoyen, looks extremely nice.

The Beach is the story of Richard, an American in Thailand looking for a real experience in our pre-packaged world. When a suicidal lunatic (played by Robert Carlyle, who else?) gives him the map to a hidden paradise, Richard thinks he's found paradise. The question is, can he accept paradise?

We hung with Leo and found him to be a normal guy (if normal guys get paid $12-20 million a picture). He's thoughtful and straightforward, two qualities you don't find in many stars. And he told us a couple things that we've always wanted to know, such as what's really in snake blood.

IGN Movies: After Titanic you could have done any script in the world. Why The Beach?
Leo: I just wanted to find something that really spoke to me. After Titanic, I really wanted to take my time and read through everything and say, "Okay, I don't want to do something that other people tell me is genius. I want to find a film that strikes a chord in me, that I feel thematically says something to me, and says something to me in some weird way." And The Beach came along, and Danny came along. He wanted to bring me in as a partner on this film. He wanted it to be a collaborative effort. He didn't want me just to be an actor for hire. He said, "Come in and we'll shape this the way we want to shape it." I just loved the theme of the movie, I loved what it said.

Without speaking for my generation whatsoever, [The Beach] talks about how we've been so desensitized in a lot of ways. We're so influenced by the media, and everything nowadays is more and more pre-packaged and pre-digested and pre-thought-out for us. And this character goes in search of something real and something tangible, a real emotion or a real experience that he can connect with on a real level. He goes traveling to Thailand and does this courageous thing, and ends up finding this pirate-like utopia which seems to be the answer to all his problems and all his prayers.

In the end he eventually realizes that paradise is essentially a false concept, that there is nothing out there that will answer all your problems. In order for paradise to exist, it should exist for everybody. He realizes the kind of sacrifices you need to make in order to live in paradise if you want to keep it a secret. Because it can't be paradise unless it's a secret, you know what I mean?

IGN Movies: If Robert Carlyle gave you a map to the beach, would you go? Would you do the five-mile swim to get there?
Leo: I'd probably find a way to get a boat over there [laughs]. Maybe have somebody check it out for me, in case there's a group of cannibals. That's what I admired about Richard, that I probably wouldn't be as courageous as he would be. I wouldn't swim over at the drop of a dime and drop everything, and meet a guy who committed suicide, and just go find some weird place that he tells me to go.

IGN Movies: Videogames are almost co-stars in The Beach. There are Game Boys in paradise, and your character has this hallucinatory sequence where he imagines his life in the jungle as a videogame. Are you a gamer? What do you play?
Leo: Everything. I've had every videogame system there is imaginable. I always like the most up-to-date version. Dreamcast, PlayStation2 is coming out. I am a videogame freak, I am a product of that generation. I think it's a trap that, once you get involved, it is truly hard to escape. I go through periods of a year where I don't play any videogames, but once I get into it again it becomes like this drug.

[The videogame sequence] was actually one of my ideas. I thought it would be a perfect idea to get into Richard's fascination with isolation, being out in the wilderness and left to his own elements. This Rambo-esque sort of character and him having fun with this for the first time. And I knew Danny is so open to those sort of surreal sequences to tell you more about the character or the story.

IGN Movies: So was marijuana field on the island real or CGI?
Leo: It was hemp. It didn't have the buds.

IGN Movies: Sorry about that. What about the snake blood you slog back? Real or Memorex?
Leo: Fake blood. Corn syrup with red number nine or whatever. It was horrible.

IGN Movies: Please tell us that you ate a real caterpillar in that jungle scene.
Leo: It was a real caterpillar.

IGN Movies: Just one?
Leo: About 20.

IGN Movies: Did you chew?
Leo: I'm not going to say.


IGN Movies Big Interview: Leonardo DiCaprio

Part 2: Leo D. talks about fame and James Cameron, and gets dodgy about Episode 2.

January 21, 2000

We continue our chat with Leo, who plays an American searching for -- and finding -- a tropical paradise in the upcoming Fox flick, The Beach.

IGN Movies: D you look at yourself in the mirror every morning and think, "God damn, the magazines are right, I'm one of the sexiest men in the world!"?
Leo: That kind of stuff I don't even think about, I don't agree with.

IGN Movies: Richard, your character in The Beach, hooks up with a few women over the course of the movie. Is he a sex symbol or a sex object?
Leo: He's the object of consumption. He wants to consume things around him, whatever [they] might be, each and every experience. He wants to go the utmost he can with every experience, really envelope it, really consume it. That's who this character is. The attraction to the women is all part of that. It's all part of getting what he wants, and then dismissing it and contradicting himself, thinking the grass is always greener on the other side, there's got to be something more. So he's constantly looking for that "more." Until it comes to the point where violence is something that he's completely fascinated with, and has to experience one-on-one. He has to have a violent experience because that's the end-all of everything. That's the pinnacle of real experience, and he becomes addicted to that and wants to see it happen.

IGN Movies: Do you have a new job lined up?
Leo: It's called Gangs of New York [written by Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks (Strange Days), to be directed by Scorsese].

IGN Movies: Is that a go? Wasn't it stalled after Robert De Niro dropped out?
Leo: As far as I know it's a go, we're going to shoot it. It's just a matter of getting everything tweaked. De Niro is no longer doing it, for personal reasons which I can't get into. They haven't cast anybody yet, but Scorsese is still writing and we're still working on it.


Leo's agent in his natural environment.
IGN Movies: What's your relationship with James Cameron? Friends? Enemies? Are you dating?
Leo: We're not engaged yet [laughs]. A good one, a fine one. There's been a lot of misconception about all that. I think it takes that type of personality to be able to command that type of film. You need that presence amongst thousands of different people doing hundreds of different jobs simultaneously all to bring that movie together. It takes that kind of personality. I don't resent him for that. Nobody else in the world could have done that movie the way he did it. Period.

IGN Movies: Pretend you're taking a final exam with one of those blue books. Compare and contrast Cameron's style with Danny Boyle's style.
Leo: Oh, they're polar opposites. Danny's an inherently sweet, gentle guy. He's … [a] genuine person who's really sensitive [laughs]. He's really much more slow-paced. They're completely different.

IGN Movies: So honestly, did George Lucas ever talk to you about being in Episode 2?
Leo: Yeah, I have talked to him. There's no script as of yet.

IGN Movies: Are you interested in playing Anakin Skywalker?
Leo: I'll see when I read the script.

IGN Movies: Give us the lowdown on what you thought about The Phantom Menace.
Leo: [carefully] I think it was interesting. I think there's more that can be done, though.

IGN Movies: If George had shown up on your doorstep with the Phantom Menace script -- in exactly the same shape you saw on screen -- would you have done it?
Leo: I don't know. I can't make that assumption, I don't know.

IGN Movies: Did George give you a date when you'd get a copy of the Episode Two script?
Leo: No. He just does what he wants.



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