March 17, 1998

"WAS LEONARDO ROBBED?" Entertainment Weekly asked last week. What a question! Of course he was -- and for primal, competitive reasons that lie deep within the twisted knot of fin de siècle American male-female relations. DiCaprio's exclusion from the best actor list was a reactionary, if probably subconscious, attempt by the academy to dictate what kind of man women ought to find attractive, in the face of distressing evidence that we really prefer Ganymede to Hercules.

The outraged-over-DiCaprio faction isn't just made up of the millions of teenage girls who, voting with their feet, have made "Titanic" the biggest-grossing movie of all time. It also includes a silent majority of adult women who don't dare admit their taste, for fear of alienating their male acquaintances. At cocktail parties and office coffee-break tables around the country, you can overhear them jeering -- only when men are present, of course -- at the "embarrassing miscasting" of Leonardo in what should have been a "man's role." But get them alone and you hear a different story -- something that sounds more like Olivia's response to Cesario/Viola in "Twelfth Night." Women are dazzled that someone so young, smooth and, yes, pretty could also be virile, loyal and pulse-racingly articulate as well.

The notion that a lithe young man with wit and wiles is more alluring to women than some crag-featured, graying, monosyllabic captain of industry makes the old male goats of America bleat in outrage. No one minds when a beardless youth plays a troubled teen, a Romeo or a young athlete; but cast him as The Right Man, and a nation of Homer Simpsons breaks out into a cold sweat. "We can't look like that," they fret, "no matter how much we work out or how much gel we put in our hair! How can we possibly hope to compete?" Join the club, a nation of women who have tried to outfast Kate Moss laugh sarcastically.

The academy's exclusion of DiCaprio is not simply ageism: After all, it nominated 27-year-old Matt Damon, who portrays a troubled youth who realizes his full potential after a sympathetic middle-aged mentor helps him out. But the Damon-Robin Williams pairing is a textbook example of the Nestor complex, the beloved academy standard, in which an old man guides a young one, so no one had to stretch a paradigm to fit Damon into the honor roll. (And yes, an even younger DiCaprio did score a nomination -- not as a romantic lead, however, but for playing a mentally retarded kid in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?") But when a gorgeous young male sexpot wins a gorgeous young female sexpot, there's got to be hell to pay, because the whole male reward system is thrown out of whack.

Deep in the heart of man, among his tenderest fantasies, rests the unshakable belief that if he gains enough status and earns enough money, he can court and/or bed any woman he wants, no matter how repugnant or aged he might be. Everyone is sickened when the order is reversed -- when Mrs. Robinson wants a summer of love with Benjamin Braddock, or when 80-year-old Maude, with her sagging breasts and flabby buttocks, beds boyish Harold. But when Dudley Moore gets Bo Derek, or that rich old Texas coot marries overripe Anna Nicole Smith, it's harmless, hilarious hi-jinks, something everyone wants to see blown up to 40-by-50. But what about women's tenderest fantasies? Cyrano de Bergerac, Olivia and Cesario, Romeo and Juliet, Speed Racer and Trixie? Being practical, women have historically paired off with prosaic types who could put a roof over their heads. But now that they can pay their own way, is it surprising that a younger, prettier model is earning $20 million per film?

Oscars for best actress sometimes go to very young women or even girls, perhaps because it is understood that the actress may not have a chance again when she gets older, after she ceases being en fleur. For young actors, there is an impulse to hold out, not just because of the sexual-pecking-order theory enumerated here but on the assumption that they will have more than enough time for another swing at the statue at 40 or 60. But DiCaprio's charm, at least at the moment, appears to be of the same hothouse variety as the starlet's. Maybe he will find a way to age gracefully as an actor, but there is also a chance that his "Titanic" performance was an unrepeatable, felicitous accident of youth in which DiCaprio's youthful idealism and romance somehow became emblematic of a rising, egalitarian America. It is a feat that a 30-something actor endowed with a 5-o'clock shadow and a few wrinkles would be hard pressed to pull off.

OK, so Leonardo DiCaprio is probably not a very nice guy. A few years ago, back when he had just pulled off a performance so good it knocked the wind out of you -- (in "Gilbert Grape," or was it "The Basketball Diaries"?) David Letterman asked him why the part of Lassie, the canine heroine of assorted TV series -- one of which DiCaprio had acted in -- had been played by a male dog, not a female dog. Leo answered with flip unconcern, "Because boys are smarter than girls." As the audience booed, he managed to look entirely bored. Then, last spring, on the heels of his Romeo performance with Claire Danes as Juliet, there came new proof of Leonardo's callowness. The tabloids reported disapprovingly that at B-Bar on the Bowery, he had ditched his date, waved some leggy Russian girl into his limo and taken her to his hotel, where, she reported tearily the next day, he had not been "very romantic." "Wherefore art thou, DiCaprio?" she pleaded, only to hear the answer, "I'm outta here."

Nor are DiCaprio's charms as an actor unassailable. No matter what the groupies may scream, his magnetism depends on the film he's acting in. Not all of his performances are Oscar-caliber, as his new film, "The Man in the Iron Mask," proves abundantly. But that makes his exclusion this year even more outrageous. And even if in real life Leonardo DiCaprio really is a 23-year-old bounder of the highest order, is that any reason to deny him an Oscar bid?

The academy's exclusion of DiCaprio is caddishness masquerading as mature judgment, jealousy posing as high-mindedness. It's one last dirty trick the toffs in first class have pulled on the noble young stud down in steerage.
SALON | March 17, 1998