Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio washes up on The Beach to chat up being a sex symbol and his "drug" of choice.

Was it already last century when Leonardo DiCaprio taught Kate Winslet to spit, then painted her naked? Leo's movie career jumped from steerage to first class when Titanic's romantic lead Jack Dawson became the object of desire for every girl (and her mother) from Tulsa to Tokyo. But he had a commendable career before that. After a substantial series of defiantly uncommercial dramas (a retarded kid in What's Eating Gilbert Grape; an aspiring junkie in The Basketball Diaries) and some bona fide art films (he was the poet Rimbaud in Total Eclipse), DiCaprio went from Academy Award-nominated actor to full-on matinee idol. The two years since the ship sank and his star rose have seen only one starring role (the forgettable Man in the Iron Mask) and a cameo (Woody Allen's Celebrity), but Leo remains the biggest movie star of the millennium, at least if you use tabloid column inches as your gauge.

With The Beach opening February 11, DiCaprio reconciles his current star power with his career-defining fondness for unconventional characters. Based on the cult novel by Alex Garland, The Beach is a glossy, big-budget studio film with a decidedly individualist spirit, thanks largely to Trainspotting director Danny Boyle. DiCaprio is Richard, a danger-seeking American backpacker abroad who enlists a young French couple (one of whom is Virginie Ledoyen) to help him find and reach a rumored island paradise off the coast of Thailand. Last month, a day after snorkeling off the coast of Maui, an unshaven DiCaprio wore a black T-shirt and jeans for our interview in the tropical paradise of the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua.

Playboy.com: It's been two years since you've starred in a movie. What is it like to go back to this sort of movie after Titanic?

Leonardo DiCaprio: After Titanic, I really wanted to take my time and read through everything and say, I don't want to do something that other people tell me is genius. I want to find something that strikes a chord in me...that I feel thematically says something to me or speaks to me in some weird way. The Beach came along and Danny came along, and he wanted to bring me in as like a partner in this film. He wanted it to be a collaborative sort of effort. He didn't just want me to be an actor for hire. He said, "Look, come in and we'll shape this the way we want to shape it." I just love the theme of the movie and what it says. What does it say?

Without speaking for my generation whatsoever, it just talks about how we've been so desensitized in a lot of ways and how we're so influenced by the media and everything is nowadays seeming more and more prepackaged and predigested and pre-thought-out for us. This character goes in search of something real or something tangible, 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, and in the end he realizes that paradise is essentially a false concept. There is nothing out there that will answer all your problems. That in order for something like paradise to exist, it should exist for everybody, and he realizes the kind of sacrifices that you need to make if you want to live in paradise if you want to keep it a secret, because it can't be paradise unless it's a secret.

It seems like nothing you do is a secret. The tabloids report your every move. How do you shut out the insanity of the tabloids and people on the periphery? Do you have a close group of friends you can laugh about this with?

Absolutely, I laugh about a lot of situations, and thank God I have a lot of friends who sort of keep me grounded constantly and remind me to laugh about it. They've been a fundamental important part of not taking this too seriously or too hard.

I think that a lot of times there's a misconception about how people view somebody in my position...that your life is constantly autograph-seeking hounds or paparazzi chasing you. But that's the only time you see them; the only time you hear about them is when something like that happens or during movie or premiere time or media time or when the paparazzi takes a picture of them. As any human being you adapt and you cocoon yourself in your own environment. You have your family and friends and your places you go and your things you do. Even in my position, a lot of the time I'm not surrounded with that stuff, unbelievably. When I go out in public I have ways of wearing a hat and glasses and not being recognized.

Would you like your fame to be ratcheted down a little?

It has. It has. It really has, actually. Not in the sense that...who knows if I'm just as recognizable as I always was, but the sort of fever that came after Titanic which I had no control over and no input into and had literally no involvement with -- it wasn't me, you know what I mean -- has died down. I knew after Titanic faded down that that would fade down, too. There's days that you enjoy being a recognizable person, but most of the time I'd say that you'd rather have your anonymity and your private life, but there's pros and cons to everything. There's give and take with everything.

What are the pros and cons of being famous?

Life is to a degree more hectic than it used to be. I have a lot more responsibility. Career-wise, all the little facets and little branches of what come along with that. Protecting this, protecting that, making sure people don't think...whatever. Essentially, and I've said this before, I've been given a fantastic opportunity to do what I love and create as an actor and be given more opportunities than I ever was before, because of Titanic essentially, to really mold my career more so than ever before. I wouldn't give it up for the world. It's an unbelievable opportunity.

What about being the sex symbol for half of humanity?

That kind of stuff I don't even think about. I don't agree with.

But, your character in The Beach is the object of attraction for at least two women.

I think he's the object of consumption. He wants to consume things around him, whatever it may be. He wants to go to the utmost he can with every experience and really envelop it and really consume it. That's who this character is. The attraction between the women is all a part of that. It's all part of getting what he wants and then dismissing it. Contradicting himself and thinking the grass is always greener on the other side. There's gotta be something more. He's constantly looking for that "more" until he comes to a point where violence is something 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 a real experience, and he becomes addicted to that and wants to see it happen. Once it does happen, it transforms him.

The scene where you imagine you're in a videogame running through the woods is truly inspired. Are you paying homage to any games in particular?

No. It was actually one of my ideas about the videogame sequence. I thought it would be a perfect idea to get into Richard's sort of fascination with isolation and being out in the wilderness and left to his own elements as this Rambo-esque character and him having fun with it the first time. I knew Danny is so open to that [sort of] surrealist scenes and sequences to tell you about the character in the story.

What's your favorite videogame?

I've had every videogame system that there is.... I've always liked the most up-to-date version, I'd say, and Dreamcast is, but I think the PlayStation II is coming out. I am a videogame freak. I am a product of that generation. I'm a product of all that stuff. I think it's a trap that eventually once you get involved with something like that it's hard to escape it. It does envelop you. I go through periods of a year where I don't play any videogames, but once I get into it again, it becomes this drug in a weird way.

Speaking of drugs, is that a real marijuana field you're running through in The Beach?

It was hemp. It was real hemp, but it didn't have the buds.

Did you do any "reefer research" on this project?

I didn't do any reefer research, no.

In the "survivalist" scenes, Richard eats a caterpillar. Did you actually eat a real caterpillar?

Yeah.

About how many of those did you have to eat?

Twenty.

Did you really eat them?

I'm not going to say.

You want to do smaller films, but your profile and paycheck demand certain concessions to make it palatable to larger audiences. How do you walk that tightrope?

That's not a true statement that I just want to make smaller films, but I want to try everything. I think before I did Titanic, I did do smaller films because that was really what was available to me. Titanic was actually a break from the norm for me. It's something that I tried that was different. The Beach is definitely getting back to what I did before that....

I think if I weren't in the position that I'm in, then the budget wouldn't be the same on the movie and stuff like that. I think if you ask Danny, the good thing about it is it only benefits the film in the end. You have more money to do more stuff that you would want to do. You can certainly make it a subversive film at the same time. Just because there's more money involved doesn't mean you can't make an experimental, subversive film.

Still, if you were offered Total Eclipse now, where you play Verlaine's protégé and sometime lover, would you feel any pressure against doing it?

I would probably be enveloped by the whole story and the whole aspect of the character and this young man that sort of revolutionized poetry at that time and completely sent the poetry world upside down with his unbelievable poems and his wild attitude about things. I was really attracted to that character. The answer would be yes, because I continue to choose things that strike a chord in me and that fascinate me and characters that interest me and stories that do, so yeah.

You were originally going to star in the film version of Bret Easton Ellis' NC-17-rated American Psycho, which premiered last week at Sundance....

No.

So, how did your name get attached to that?

There was a script that I read, and I thought it was an interesting script. I liked the idea of that demented sort of character being put in that Eighties sort of upper highbrow environment in that time, but I eventually realized that it didn't amount to anything. That it didn't mean anything in the end. There was nothing that I really cared about when it was all said and done. I read the script and basically expressed interest in it, and then sort of during that whole hot air balloon of Titanic media, it became something bigger than what it was. People do that all the time essentially. Actors do that all the time.

Have you actually talked to George Lucas about Star Wars: Episode 2?

I have talked to him, but there's no script as of yet. When I read the script, I'll see.

What did you think of the first one?

I thought it was interesting. I think there's more that could be done, though.

How would you characterize your relationship with Titanic director James Cameron at this point?

My relationship? We're not engaged yet. [laughs]

A good one. A fine one. There's been a lot of misconception about all that. I think that it takes that type of personality to be able to command that type of film. You need that presence amongst thousands of different people who are doing hundreds of different jobs simultaneously, all to bring that movie together. It takes that kind of personality, and I don't resent him for that. You know, nobody else in the world could have done that movie the way he did it, period.

Can you compare James' style to Danny Boyle's style?

They're polar opposites. Danny's an inherently sweet guy. He's an inherently sweet, genuine person who is really sensitive, and he's much more slow-paced. They're completely different.

If you had a map, would you live at The Beach?

I'd probably find a way to get a boat over there. Maybe have somebody check it out for me, just in case there were a group of cannibals.