From The Sun....

Exclusive: Day 1 of a brilliant series on DiCaprio’s new movie The Beach.

Leo wanted a full sexual encounter.

In the best selling novel in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s new film The Beach is based ,
his character Richard and the beautiful French traveller Francoise never reach the
nookie stage.

But when Leo accepted the role, he made sure he got to enjoy some of his most
sizzling scenes ever with stunning French actress Virginie Ledoyen.

In his only British interview for the movie, the Titanic star reveals: “It truly bothered
me about the book that he never has any kind of sexual contact with Francoise.
“It just kept on this constant foreplay between the two characters that never amounted
to anything.
And I really wanted something whether it be complete and utter rejection or some sort
of wild sexual encounter, it just had to happen.”

Leo, 25, pocketed £12 million for playing the aimless American backpacker who
stumbles across a map leading to a secret paradise beach.

The film was produced and directed by the same British team that made Trainspotting.
Leo loved that film so much that he turned down roles in bigger-budget movies for the
opportunity to work on The Beach.

He says: “I wanted to find something I was truly in love with.I wanted to work but I
just didn’t want to do something that I felt was going to bore me.
“Trainspotting was truly one of the most original films I had seen in ages - one of the
top three films I had ever seen in my life.
“And I haven’t enjoyed making a film like this in a long time.”

Leo has been actin since he was 14 but the movie that changed his life was the 1998
blockbuster Titanic.

Playing Jack Dawson was a giant leap from the quirky roles he had played previously
such as This Boys Life.

Titanic made £900 million world-wide and turned Leo from a promising heart-throb to
an international megastar.

Reflecting on that phenomenal success he says: “ I’m extremely lucky. How many
people in a billion get to be in my shoes?

“But of course there’s a price to pay. The most upsetting thing is realising I’m no
longer the underdog. I’ve always felt like the guy who has to go out there and prove
himself.
“None of my movies ever made any money. And now I’ve gone form being in that
position, which I was comfortable with, to being the Antichrist.”
He adds: “ Titanic is, in a lot of ways, a masterpiece. It’s an unbelievable movie. But it
takes you years to detach yourself from a movie and it’s going to take me a while to
really look at it for what it is.”

Leonardo has learned to cope with the attention such success brings.

He says: “I still have the same experiences that I’ve always had. I go wherever I want
to go. I do whatever the hell I want to do. The smartest thing to do after a situation
like that is to go hide in a hole for a year and never talk to anyone.
“But I’m not going to do that.”

The Beach which follows Richard to a hippy commune on a paradise island, is a
remarkable echo of his own Bohemian childhood in a world of sex, drugs and rock and
roll.

Leo grew up in one of the most dangerous areas of Los Angeles where his neighbours
included prostitutes, drug addicts and gang members.

His parents George and Irmelin, were sixties hippies who were into free love drugs and
communism - and encouraged their son to be the same. Leonardo was born in
November 1974 and named after Leonardo da Vinci.

His parents settled in run-down East Hollywood because they had very little money
and needed a home for their baby son. In those days, George wrote and helped draw
an underground comic and he sold the comics of other hippy writers for a living.

He said: “Leo was smack dab in the middle of it, sleeping on cartoons of underground
comics.”

When the marriage broke up, George moved into a craftsman’s cottage on one side of
some waste ground. Irmelin and Leo moved into a similar cottage on the other side.
To make sure the family stayed in touch George planted a garden on the land in
between so they would see each other all the time. “It was a very Polynesian
arrangement,” said George, who continued to raise Leo with Irmelin “in a co-operative
way.”

When George married second wife Peggy, the ceremony was performed by hippy
leader and champion of LSD Timothy Leary.

As the young Leonardo walked to school each day, he had to pick his way through the
syringes and drug paraphernalia that littered the narrow alleyways around his home.
He was especially close to his mother and said: “ She meant everything to me. She
made me the together person I am today.”

Leo only recently moved out of a house he bought for his Mum in Malibu and he
insisted that both she and his gran got parts in The Beach.

They played extras in the film’s first scene set in a travellers hostel and he admitted on
set: “I’m nervous for them.”
In The Beach Leo found a story which echoed the same hippy ideas he had grown up
with.

He reveals: “This generation that I’m in is so saturated with all this digital information,
whether it be video games or movies or television, and has never been connected with
any kind of real war or anything that they could really truly fight for or believe in. So
we are constantly looking for some kind of reality all over the place and are just
saturated with all this information digitally.
“And it was a fascinating journey for this character who basically not trying to lead a
robotic existence.”

Leo’s co-star Virginie Ledoyen says of him: “ He’s not completely sure of himself.
He’s always trying.
This is quite fascinating when you’re such a superstar.”

Leo will be in London next month for the premier of the film, which opens across
Britain on February 11.

This extract is taken from an exclusive interview published in the February 2000
edition of The Face magazine, on sale from January 20.

Tomorrow: The truth about Leo and me by his stunning co-star Virgine.