Three extras were injured in the incident on the set of the 19th-century period drama, directed by Martin Scorsese and costarring Cameron Diaz.

DiCaprio became angry at paparazzi who took pictures of the accident and pelted them with horse manure, according to one Italian news agency.

Another news agency reports both incidents but makes no connection between them.

From Army Archerd, Daily Variety in his February 2nd, 2001:

Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz visited the ``Gangs of New York'' extra in the hospital who was injured during filming on the Villa Borghese location in Rome Thursday. Two other players received minor injuries during the scene when a horse, drawing a wagon, bolted. But the duo did not require a hospital stay after being taken from the location by ambulance. It was during the removal of the injured when paparazzi descended on the group and an irate DiCaprio heaved a container of horse manure at the paparazzi. The film had been ducking them but Rome is the place where the term ``paparazzi'' was born, y'know. Film reps say the lensers have been hiding in men's and women's rest rooms, under tables, etc. and in this case, the reps says they were interfering with the victims being loaded into the ambulances -- that's when Leonardo reportedly took umbrage -- and aim.

And from the Italian press..La Repubblica

The newspaper Corriere Della Sera

Di Caprio is cast against the paparazzos Rome - «not even Frank Sinatra was not so bad...». It is two in the afternoon, at Bourgeois Villa and the external filming of the film of Martin Scorsese «Gangs of New York» It is transformed in a big uproar. Leonardo Di Caprio, the protagonist, has thrown hardly a full glass of excrements of horse feces to a paparazzo. A little anymore in there three extras, among which a 9 year-old child, groans under a carriage that suddenly she is ruined to the figurantis. Cameron Diaz, also her in possession of a full glass of excrements, renouncement to the gesture of her partner but visibly stays in crisis. The set is stopped, two ambulances arrive, the photographers protest and at the end for one of the wounded extras a hospital refuge goes off: the ligaments of her right knee are damaged.

It had to be a calm calm set, with the filming of a walk nineteenth-century New York in which some carriages was foreseen, about fifty extras in costume, the two protagonists immortalized on Bourgeois Villa and of its architectural jewels. The production, in this second day outside in the heart of the most known villa in Rome, was worried about to defend its superstars from the assault of the photographers resorting to the employment of a dozen open umbrellas toward the outside of the set and turned against the objectives of the paparazzos. The forenoon is spent so, with small raids of the photographers among the smagliatures of the system of defense conceived by the cinema production and the long sequence of initiated takes from 8 and a half after a little while and continued up to the pause to have lunch when the baskets have been distributed.

Then, after the brief one «break», the filming of the walk is restarted. Meanwhile the pressure of the paparazzos had not surrendered of a millimeter. Unexpectedly one of the carriages that was doing before and back in the path all is folded up by a side and it goes to beat against a wall. One of the two horses, frightened, has addressed her with strength toward that point in which were stationed a group of extras. Lorella, a 38 year-old woman, in the private life mother of a beautiful child, has uttered a cry and she has covered with her body the small figure that was nearby her, Veronica, a 9 year-old child that frequents the elementary fourth grade. Both have been bruised, luckily in a not too serious way: the child with a little deep wound to the cheekbone and the woman with some excoriations and a cut on the left eyelid.

Meanwhile a bystander extra, Laura, of 37 years, she had slipped under the tilted carriage hurting her leg. In the general confusion, while a lot of hands tried to lift the carriage to extract the wounded extra, the photographer Mauro Sortini has approached the place of the accident and he has started take a photo. Cameron Diaz sees him that for the fear is about to burst in tears and Leonardo Di Caprio also sees him that it grabs a plastic glass and it starts to pick up from earth a bit of excrements left by a horse. Also Cameron Diaz imitates him. Then the two actors climb on one those electric macchinettes typical of the sweater fields, in use also in the sets, and brandishing the glasses they run into the paparazzo, legionary from his releases. Di Caprio launches to him set the content of his glass. The dirtied paparazzo mends among his colleagues.

The wounded extras are transported to the Policlinico Umberto I. Á. evening they are released. The small Veronica she has gotten by with so much fear and a bit of mercurocromo on the cheek. Her protecting Lorella goes out of the policlinico with a bandaid above the eye and a prognosis of 7 days. Laura, has brought instead the ligament, mediate damages her and she is transferred to the American Hospital by a spacious Chrysler Voyager of the production. The paparazzos protest against Leonardo Di Caprio («it Has to give to him one calmed and to ask excuses us», Rino Barillari thunders in the name of the category).

And him, the superstar, has gone to find in the clinic the poor in-patient that she will have for quite a lot days of it. «No comment» of his agent Ken Sunshine on the matter excrements: «I can say only - precise - that the photographers' pressure on Leonardo is terrible». The same for the manufacturing major of the film, the Miramax, that in relationship to the accident and «for respect of the people» involved has decided however the suspension of the resumptions of the film for one day.

While a scene was filmed of" Gangs of New York" (with Di Caprio and the Diaz) an animal crushes a woman -
Fear on the set of Scorsese - Extra hurt by horse -
And the superstar of " Titanic " he picks it up with the photographers, striking one of them with a throwing of excrements

Rome - It happened indeed of everything, this morning, on the Roman set of" Gangs of New York", Martin Scorsese's film, with Leonardo Di Caprio and Cameron Diaz protagonists, in workmanship for months in the capital: first an accident has caused the injury of an extra, crushed by a horse; then the capricious superstar of " Titanic " he is picked up with the photographers that tried to immortalize the scene, and he has thrown against one of them the excrements of the animal.

But we start from the accident, happened (around 2 pm) to Bourgeois Villa, along the avenue that coasts along on the right the Bourgeois Museum, to the top of Avenue of the Pyramids. Seven carriages of epoch were unthreading, when the wheel of a carriage, at the side of which three extras, two women and a child traveled, it has skidded. Howl of fear of the extras they have made imbizzarrire the horse, that has caused the overthrow of the carriage with an abrupt movement. One of the women, hurled out of the cabin, she has bumped against the wall that coasts along the avenue and then she has been dragged for some meters until the technicians of the production they have succeeded in stopping the horse. And immediately is called an ambulance. An episode that has traumatized the two principal actors. Cameron Diaz - some have told photographers that were found on the set -" she howled as a crazy person and she has also had a spell of faint." Di Caprio has discharged his anger instead against the photographers that had immortalized the scene, throwing a cup full of excrements of horse against one of them, and striking him in full to the head. Maximum reserve between the technicians and the employees to the safety, that they refused to furnish information to the reporters on the accident. The tension was visible on the faces of actors, all in nineteenth-century suits, and employed to the production, that they have interrupted the filming postponing to her to tomorrow. The film, set in 1860, tells the history of the first immigrants Irish arrivals in the " Big Apple ".

The UK Times (thanks Chloe)

FROM RICHARD OWEN IN ROME - 2-02-01

ROME'S paparazzi have been used to being insulted and manhandled since the heyday of La Dolce Vita in the 1960s, when they sprang to fame by taking royalty and film stars unawares and were immortalised by Federico Fellini. Leonardo DiCaprio scored an unusual first in the history of cinema, however, when he flung horse manure in the face of a photographer taking pictures of a film set accident.

The incident, which was the talk of Rome yesterday, took place during the filming of scenes in a Rome park for Gangs of New York, directed by Martin Scorsese, and starring DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz. Work on the film, set in the world of immigrants to New York in the early 19th century, began in Rome six months ago and has another six weeks to go.

There have been repeated reports of strain among the filmmakers, with Scorsese setting a "demanding pace" and reprimanding DiCaprio for repeatedly arriving late on set. The tensions came to a head this week when after months of inside shots at Cinecittà, the Rome film studios, the cast moved to an external location for the first time, shooting scenes in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, standing in for 19th-century Central Park in New York.

With 60 extras and seven horse-drawn carriages providing the background, the cameras filmed Diaz in a crinoline and bonnet and Di Caprio sporting a straggly moustache and beard.

Disaster struck on the twentieth retake of the same scene, when one of the carriages lost a wheel.

Witnesses said the horse pulling the carriage stumbled and took fright, overturning the vehicle which crashed into a group of extras. As the paparazzi emerged from the bushes a furious DiCaprio scooped up horse manure with a plastic cup, leapt on an electric golf cart used to transport the actors and equipment on set, and headed for Mauro Sortini, a leading paparazzo, flinging the contents of the beaker in his face.

Massimo Sestini, a fellow photographer well known for his scoops, said DiCaprio had lost his head. He said that Diaz had been agitated too and had burst into tears and fainted.

"This was a case of the biggest names among Rome's paparazzi against the biggest names in cinema," Il Messaggero said. It said Signor Sortini had complained to the police. One of the extras, Laura Cavacetti, 37, normally a singer at the spa resort of Chianciano near Siena, was in hospital yesterday with torn ligaments in her right knee.

Lorella Latini, 38, said she had signed on as an extra with her nine-year-old daughter Veronica. "When I saw the carriage coming towards us I grabbed hold of Veronica. By pure fortune, although the horse was clearly frightened and out of control, I got only cuts and bruises."