Fueling the mania was the fact that DiCaprio dealt with post-Titanic stress disorder by seeking the comfort and serenity of virtually every club in Manhattan and in the greater Los Angeles area. If you spilled a drink in those places in the past two years, you probably drenched DiCaprio or one of his inseparable crew. They include actor Tobey Maguire ("The Cider House Rules"), director Harmony Korine (Julien Donkey-Boy) and magician David Blaine. Rumors of DiCaprio spinning out of control were rampant.

"I was indie boy before Romeo and Juliet and Titanic — I'd never dealt with any of that in my life," says DiCaprio of the attention his antics have sparked. "I didn't know what being somebody that recognizable entailed. And Titanic is something that will never happen again. Nor will I ever try to repeat it."

All of which has led us here to see The Beach, DiCaprio's first film in two years and the reason he has emerged to see what kind of shadows he now casts in Hollywood.

From the outset, DiCaprio's choice of The Beach was meant to show his independence. It also shows his clout. For Titanic, DiCaprio's salary was a reported $2.5 million; The Beach represents his first $20 million payday. That kind of money gets you heard on the set even without a producing credit.

Based on the 1997 novel by Alex Garland, the film is the brainchild of the same London-based trio that created Trainspotting : director Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald. Boyle's easygoing directorial presence clearly pleases the actor more than the tyrannical grip of Titanic's James Cameron, whose style of filmmaking, says DiCaprio, has "a military feel." DiCaprio plays Richard, an adventure junkie traveling alone in Thailand who stumbles upon a map to a paradise that, like any paradise, cannot stay pure once it is discovered by outsiders. Unless, by chance, your idea of nirvana includes marijuana fields partrolled by guards with Ak-47s, shark attacks and manipulative sex. Richard is disillusioned, burned out on the excess of Western culture yet unable to escape the fact that he is as much the problem as the society he has escaped. It's not difficult to see why the theme of The Beach has been DiCaprio's chief obsession for more than a year.

In fact, when we sit down for the first of our interviews two days later. DiCaprio will begin by being entirely fixated on The Beach. But soon he settles into a discussion that stretches from his childhood (his parents, George and Irmelin, split before he was a year old, but both were active in his life) to adolescence (DiCaprio, who appeared on Romper Room at age five, began acting in commercials at fourteen, had a recurring TV role on Growing Pains and nabbed his breakthrough part opposite Robert DeNiro in This Boy's Life at seventeen) all the way to his next role, in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. ("He's a Rolex of Film," says DiCaprio of Scorsese. "It's mind-boggling.")

Because the house DiCaprio recently purchased in the Hollywood Hills is undergoing construction, the interviews take place at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. Our first meeting is in late December, and when DiCaprio takes a seat, he stares at the twenty-foot Christmas tree and says, "I just bought a tree this size for my living room." You assume his new home is rather roomy.

Throughout the conversations, DiCaprio is friendly, matter-of-fact, and although he isn't prone to a great deal of introspection, he manages to convey the feeling that he is as baffled and amused by his success as anyone. He peppers his converation with B-boy-speak, but he is also, as he points out continually, at pains to redefine his career as an adult. Like Richard in The Beach, DiCaprio has dropped out and is now returning, hoping to make some sense of what he's seen.

"Which is difficult when reminders of your own fame as everywhere.

Take the Chateau Marmont waiter who approaches the table at this very minute.

"Hey, that was a killer party you threw, man," he says.

"Which one?" asks DiCaprio.

"The one where Jennifer Lopez showed up and walked in on me in the bathroom." says the waiter."That's a dream come true."

"Oh, yeah, that one up there," says DiCaprio. He looks up toward a hotel room as the waiter walks away.

"I invited those dudes up from the hotel," he says after a moment. "I had a dope party up there."

He stares at the tape recorder and grimaces. You smile. This seems like a good place to begin.

Let's tackle your reputation of being constantly on the Hollywood party scene. That must come from somewhere, correct?

Well, absolutely. I go out with my buddies whenever I want.

There have been so many stories about you being out of control, either drunk or on drugs. Was there ever a time you were worried that you were losing control?

Never. Never, ever.

Then what is true? How wild does it get?

I had a birthday party here.

OK, how late did that party go?

[Smiles] All I'm going to say is that I'm a healthy, happy person, and people can think whatever they want to think. I don't care. I understand that people are interested. But to sit here and fight rumors about yourself is a waste of time.

A lot of it is gossip, but some could be a concern. Look at River Phoenix : People knew before he died that he was out of control. There probably is actual concern that you're goign to go down the same road.

If anyone knew me personally, they'd know that's not the truth. And that's all there is to it. Before this all happened to me, I'd hear rumors about other actors and think, "How can they live with themselves when they know those rumors are out there?" And you know what? You get in this situation and you know, you realize that any amount of fame comes with that negativity posted on it.

"The Beach" is really about trying to escape Western culture, and in a strange way you're a symbol of that. You're the thing people can't escape.

Yeah [laughs]. Richard goes to escape Leonardo DiCaprio [laughs].

Was that a draw?

Absolutely that had a lot to do with it. Richard's character in a lot of ways was escaping things that I was. It was escaping this whole whirlwind of stuff that was going on. The ironic thing is that I didn't fuel any of that. I can't help that I'm on People magazine's "Fifty Most Beautiful" whatever. I'm not saying these are horrible things. I'm just saying I wasn't aggressively promoting myself. I did one magazine cover before the movie came out, and then I didn't do anything else.

Come on. You were out at clubs all the time.

Yeah, but I can't do anything about that.

But if you don't want that attention, you don't have to be out with tons of women at the clubs. It wasn't hard to find you. You were out.

I'm not going to be a hermit. That was definitely a rebellious attitude I had toward the whole thing, My whole make-up was saying, "Just because you're in this position, you're not going to stop doing what you normally do." And, by the way, just to clear the air, truly ninety percent of what was written about me was fabricated. The cored might come from somewhat real events, but it's turned into something completely different. I don't want to get into specifics, because it's just a waste of time, but I will comment on one. I don't know where it was coined, but they started calling me and my friends the Pussy Posse, and I think it's the most degrading thing toward women I've ever heard in my life. I've never used that term in my entire life.

Most of your friends are actors. Are there people whose work we'd know, other than Tobey Maguire's?

Ethan Suplee — he was the big guy in American History X. I don't know if you'd know the other guys — Jay Ferguson, Kevin Connelly.

There is also the story out there that you and your friends tried to hit on "Showgirls" star Elizabeth Berkley and got in a fight with her boyfriend, Roger Wilson.

That, again, I had zero involvement in. Zero. When I say zero, I mean zero. The truth will come out in the end.... But this has been such a learning experience. I'm glad I went through it. It made me so much stronger.

You said that ninety percent is untrue. Well, that allows you to get away with the other ten percent and just say, "It's all lies."

[Laughs] Well, nobody's going to believe me about anything anyway. I don't think most people know what they're going through until they look at it in the past tense. You need time away. It also has a lot to do with — not to say I went insane or anything — but the great thing about Richard sort of going nuts on this island is what when you're in that state of mind, you don't know you're in that state of mind. In fact, you usually think you're more clearheaded than ever. Only later on do you realize what you've done and what you were clearly going through.

Did you take the role in Woody Allen's "Celebrity" to make fun of your image as a drinking, drugging, sex-crazed, hotel-trashing party boy?

People assumed that, but not at all. Woody Allen called me to do a funny ass character. I based it on a lot of full-of-shit people I've met, a lot of Hollywood types.

I heard you based it on your "Gilbert Grape" co-star Johnny Depp.

No. I guess the only similarity would be that both the character and Johnny Depp destroyed a hotel room. You gotta understand, Woody Allen wrote everything. I just played it.

Does it surprise you that people want to believe the bad stuff?

It doesn't matter in the end. Look, I admired River Phoenix before he unfortunately passed away, and I heard all these things about him, and it changed my image of him. But at the same time, I never got an opportunity to know the guy. I don't know the truth. And none of that stuff matters in the end. All that's left is the acting. That's all that matters.

Are you a better actor today than you were at seventeen and working with Robert De Niro in "This Boy's Life"?

I don't know. I don't watch anything of mine much. I haven't gone to drama school, or college, either. I just like to watch other actors in action. I learned so much from working with De Niro. I'd be in a scene with him where I was supposed to be acting, and I was just watching. I don't ask other actors questions. I think that's too intrusive. I just watch. I don't want to be constructed to an idea of what acting is by anyone else. I want to take my own education.

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