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On the beach with DiCaprio

Chatting about movies and life, the golden boy is happy as a clam

By Claudia Puig

USA TODAY

KAPALUA, Maui -- After he became the world's most popular heartthrob, Leonardo DiCaprio took some time -- almost two years, in fact -- to figure out what he wanted to do next.

Perhaps reflecting his inner restlessness, the 25-year-old actor was finally drawn to playing a seeker -- someone who would drink snake's blood for kicks and risk his life searching for a utopian community on an uncharted isle.

DiCaprio found that character in The Beach, a movie that's light-years from the sentimental mega-blockbuster Titanic.

In The Beach, opening Feb. 11, Hollywood's highest-paid actor under age 30 plays a rootless backpacker seeking experience at all costs. His credo: ''If it hurts, it's probably worth it.'' The character is drawn to a remote island off the coast of Thailand that is host to a commune soaking in an idyllic lifestyle that proves fatally flawed.

''It was the only thing that I really connected with and really thought meant something,'' DiCaprio says in an interview. ''Not to say that I only want to do projects that have some sort of message to society, but I really identified with this character's search for getting out of a robotic existence and trying to find some sort of real sensation of emotion.''

DiCaprio has been on a similar sensation-seeking quest. A jet-setter whose every exploit hits the tabloids, his boyishly handsome face is plastered on magazines and newspapers worldwide; every woman he gazes upon is eventually rumored to be his squeeze.
His character in The Beach, DiCaprio says, ''wins the lottery, finds the ultimate paradise, and it turns out to be very costly.''

The actor won his own lottery by starring in arguably the most successful movie of all time. And his Hollywood dream has had its cost, too.

''Almost everything that's printed about me is a lie,'' says DiCaprio, who maintains he actually leads a much simpler life than is portrayed by the media. Reports of random bar fights and smooches with Carmen Electra -- it's all distorted, hyped, overblown, he says. ''During the whole Titanic fever, it did get frustrating,'' he says, sighing. ''It's sort of calmed down a bit. But what gets to me is one tiny thing will happen and it's mutated into a monster of lies.'' Danny Boyle, DiCaprio's director for The Beach, sympathizes. ''You get a glimpse of what his life is like when you're working with him in Thailand, and then you read a story that says he's at a club in New York.''

So, just what is true? Well, first off, he's not a brat. He doesn't seem spoiled or rude. He's soft-spoken, earnest, fixing his pale aqua-blue eyes intently on those he speaks with. The golden boy even looks golden: He's tan, his dark blond hair is stylishly spiked and tousled, and he's sprouting a hint of facial hair on his upper lip and chin. (''It's just the amount of hair that I can grow,'' he says with a laugh. ''You can just call it unshaven.'') He appears to be a polite, well-spoken, hard-working fellow. While filming The Beach, he was repeatedly stung by jellyfish, but he dismisses the pain: ''Giant tides of jellyfish would come in, but a little vinegar took care of it.''

He takes his profession seriously and says he is grateful for the fame. ''It's a series of much more highs and lows since Titanic, but I think I'm a very fortunate person. I don't have a negative attitude about fame at all. I'm not tortured or constrained by it. . . . It's given me the opportunity to do the one thing in my life that I know is a true passion of mine, which is acting.''

He seems to have made his peace with being a teen idol.
''It is what it is. It's nice that young girls like me, I suppose.''

Still, he was unprepared for this level of fame. ''There was no handbook for me,'' he says. ''No Being Famous for Dummies.''
But he won't allow the paparazzi to force him ''to chain myself up just because of the fact that people are going to talk about the things that I do.'' He seems to cultivate a mystique that is equal parts party boy and serious young actor.

While in Maui to publicize The Beach, he hit the sushi bar with longtime pal and fellow actor Tobey Maguire, who was traveling with him. Well-heeled guests were reduced to star-struck fans. He also went scuba diving. And like the character he plays in The Beach, he's a self-confessed ''video game freak.'' ''I've had every video game system there is,'' he says. ''It's a trap once you get involved with that stuff. It becomes like this drug in a weird way.'' DiCaprio devised a scene in The Beach in which his character imagines himself part of a video game.

Other than video games, friends from his teen years and family help DiCaprio keep it together. ''It's sort of a cliche at this point for every actor to say, but I do have very close friends and family,'' he says with a sheepish laugh. ''Thank God, I have my friends to keep me grounded. They've been a fundamental part of my not taking things too seriously.''

He had a notoriously frosty relationship with Titanic director James Cameron and called making the film ''the toughest experience of my life.'' Much was made of DiCaprio's pouring a bucket of ice water over the director's head and his conspicuous absence from the Oscar ceremony when Titanic rode to glory.
But when he speaks of Cameron now, he is restrained. ''I don't think anybody else in the world could have made that movie the way he did it,'' DiCaprio says. ''It takes a certain type of personality to control a gigantic environment like that, thousands of different occupations merging together to make something happen. I don't resent him for that.''
However, he pointedly contrasts the styles of Cameron and Boyle: ''They're polar opposites. Danny's an inherently sweet, genuine person who's really sensitive. They're really different.''
He came out of Titanic determined to take more time between projects so as to be a part of the creation and writing of a movie.

Making a movie in Thailand was an eye-opening experience. News reports last year claimed that the filmmakers destroyed the island while shooting. DiCaprio considers himself an environmentalist and was upset at the media's depiction of him as an eco-villain.
''I'm a little bitter just because it is a lie,'' he says. ''I would never go to a different country that I don't belong to and destroy their island. We were targeted as this big Hollywood machine who came in and disrespected this island, when as a matter of fact we took off 3 tons of garbage from this island. But a lie started, and all of a sudden it just grew and grew into something else, and that was the story and there was no way we could contradict it.''

DiCaprio, who is in the $20 million club now, grew up in an artsy environment in Los Feliz, a hilly neighborhood near Hollywood. His mother was a German refugee. His father, an Italian-American free-spirited underground comics writer, exposed him to a boho hippie world that included Timothy Leary (who performed his father and stepmother's wedding ceremony), poet Allen Ginsberg and artists such as Robert Williams and cartoonist R. Crumb.
''My upbringing was a part of a whole '70s hippie generation,'' he says. ''I grew up with tons of costumes constantly around the house, and dancing and weird eclectic people and artists, and weird things happening. But we didn't live in a geodesic dome or anything.''

From childhood, DiCaprio found meaning in playacting. He first appeared in commercials as a boy and landed a recurring role in the TV sitcom Growing Pains at 16. His first movie, This Boy's Life, at 17, was followed by his Oscar-nominated turn in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. His other films include the teen hits William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Man in the Iron Mask.
''I didn't quite understand what acting was at a really young age, but I was always performing and doing imitations,'' he says. His next performing may be of the Star Wars type. He recently met with creator George Lucas at his Skywalker Ranch. DiCaprio is interested in doing the second Star Wars prequel (playing the teenage Anakin Skywalker character) but is waiting for a script.

In the meantime, he'll watch how audiences take to him in a darker role and try his best to lead a normal life. ''I think the perception of what my normal life is like is somewhat tainted by this sort of fame that Titanic has put me in,'' he says. ''I think people look at my daily activities as being completely manipulated by other people and that I have no freedom -- and that's not the truth. I really try to do whatever the hell I want to do.''

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