Berlinale-Interview 2000
 

filmfestivals.com - 15.02.01

Nick Roddick, Moving Pictures veteran interviewer, will be interviewing the well-known and the budding new talent, as well as the
other key players at this 50th Berlinale edition.

Leonardo Di Caprio



Nick Roddick talks to the kid from Hollywood, a young man whose only crime was to act in the most successful film of
all time. The Beach

Virginie Ledoyen pretty much sums it up when someone asks her the question that goes: "What
was it like working with Leonardo DiCaprio?"

Actually, it is pretty much the only question being asked in that cramped little room in the
Kempinski. And it will likewise later be asked, over and over again, in the zoo of a press
conference which follows in the Palast. That, and the question that is put to the star himself,
which goes: "What's it like being Leonardo DiCaprio?".

Not surprisingly, DiCaprio has got the answer to that one pretty much sorted by now. But Ledoyen
is still in her first few weeks of hearing it, so she answers it with quiet resignation. Like everyone, she pays tribute to Leo's skill and
commitment as an actor. But the fame, she says, gets in the way.

Well, what she actually says is: "He's such a superstar and he has so much exposure and blah-blah-blah..."

On Saturday, you could have cut, sliced and wrapped the blah-blah-blah by the kilo. Sliced it, wrapped it and sold it outside on the
street. Blah-blah-blah is, after all, the stock-in-trade of the film industry. Stardom is distilled blah-blah-blah. And Leonardo DiCaprio
is 120% proof. This stuff is addictive and seductive and destructive. And self-generating.

Riding back from the Kempinski on the U-Bahn, I find myself thinking, "I bet that guy over there doesn't know I just talked to
Leonardo DiCaprio!" That's a shaming thought for one of my years, but it did at least bring home to me what it must be like actually
to be Leonardo DiCaprio from Christmas to breakfast time.

Leo's answer to the standard question about being him comes in various forms, the most direct of which goes something like this.

"Sure, it's definitely affected my life. The fine line that you try to walk is to somehow have a normal life and do things that you would
normally do and at the same time be respectful of who you are. I try as much as I can to separate myself from that sort of image of
me and try and maintain a normal existence on my own. I think that's the only healthy way to do it.

"The important thing from me is also not to disconnect myself from normal experiences and to go on doing real things and
interacting with people just because of who I am. I don't believe that becoming a hermit is at all a sane or a logical way to deal with
it."

Later in the day, someone tells me a story about how his daughter went to grade school with Leo in Los Angeles and remembers
him standing at a bus stop on Pico, doing cigarette tricks for the girls in his class. Then, a year or so ago, the same daughter goes
into a club on Sunset and there is Leo at the bar, doing cigarette tricks for the girls.

I'm not sure why I'm being told this story, but I laugh, in the way you laugh at stories about movie stars, because the point is
usually that they are all air-heads. I've been thinking about this story, though, and I realise it is actually saying something else ­
something much more in Leo's favour.

And anyway, I prefer his own story. "I have vivid memories that are so closely attached to my childhood from coming to Germany,"
he says (his mother and maternal grandparents are German). "I remember entering a break-dancing competition here. I wasn't the
best break-dancer, but they knew I was from the United States, so they gave me a trophy! I actually had a little USA tee-shirt that I
wore around so anyone who wasn't actually clear would know where I was from. I was treated as 'the kid from Hollywood'."

It's only in transcribing this that I realise that, in the context of Berlin 2000, this story is positively dripping with irony. He's still the
kid from Hollywood: but the tee-shirt has become him.

The questions that keep occurring to me as I write this are: What did we want him to do? Did we want him to turn down Titanic?
And, having made it, was he supposed to want it to fail? It's not his fault that it's the biggest hit in the history of the cinema. How
did we want him to act differently when it was? To denigrate the movie? To denigrate his performance?

Of course not: we did that for him. We could snipe, could pretend we thought he wanted to be on all those teen-magazine covers,
that he was the tee-shirt that had replaced the actor. And then we could be magnanimous and grudgingly admit that his
performance is the best thing in The Beach. Not bad for a movie star, a teen idol, a tee-shirt.

"I keep saying this," he says, when I ­ like everyone else ­ ask him the question that boils down to: What is it like being Leonardo
DiCaprio, "but the truth is, Titanic was a real departure from the movies that I was doing. It was the type of film that I really wanted
to try at least once, you know, and at least say that I did and that I went for it."

"And I'm glad I did to this day: it was an unbelievable experience. But it certainly doesn't affect how I treat roles. I think it would be
underestimating any type of audience, whether it would be teenagers or whatever else, to continue to do the same thing over and
over again. Ultimately that would be doom for an actor. And I don't think people expect you to do that. They want to see you
change."

Even so, I get his autograph at the end, telling everyone, even him, that it's for my daughters.

 
 






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