What do we know about Leo DiCaprio? Not much besides the fact that he has been our celebrity crush ever since Titanic, and we’re aware of the name of his scandalous friend group, along with heir relation. Here are some Leo DiCaprio facts that you may not have been privy to before.
1. Jack, the most iconic role Leo has played so far, almost wasn’t played by the young Leonardo DiCaprio. The studios producing Titanic apparently wanted Matthew McConaughey to play jack instead. Thanks goodness for the stubbornness of James Cameron.
2. He was born on November 11, 1974, it means Leo DiCaprio’s age is 45. Not yet a silver fox, but we’re looking forward to the day that DiCaprio becomes an official silver haired zaddy.
3. Many women go with a “6 foot and over” rule – luckily Leo DiCaprio’s height is just six feet, but we have a feeling that even if he wasn’t, most of the women in the world would still be down.
4. At age 19, young Leonardo DiCaprio was the seventh youngest actor ever to be nominated for an Academy Award. The nomination was for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, the 1994 masterpiece. He wouldn’t win the award until almost 20 years after, but Leo said this was his favorite role.
5. There are a lot of memorable Leonardo DiCaprio movies, but the only one he was nominated for and actually won was The Revenant. After fighting a bear, that’s the least they could have given him.
6. He definitely deserved that award for The Revenant – filled in Alberta, Canada, freezing temperatures were the norm. Still, DiCaprio jumped into an icy river with a bear pelt on him that weighted over 50 lbs. He fought through various illnesses while filming and that gross phlegm scene, apparently, was an authentic scene filmed during a day when Leo had the flu.
7. He founded the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, an organization that Leo, an avid environmentalist, founded in to support sustainability efforts. He’s even BFF’s with Greta Thunberg! He also is a board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Global Green USA.
8. Leonardo DiCaprio’s net worth it a whopping $260 million. While he only got paid a base salary of 2.5 million for Titanic, thanks to getting almost 2% of gross backend points, he earned $40 million. From then on, it’s been a minimum of $20 million per role.
9. In Titanic, one of the most famous lines, “I’m the king of the world” was an ad-lib on Leonardo DiCaprio’s part. This improvisation made it into various “100 Greatest Movie Lines” round-ups.
10. Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriends are a long list of pretty, young women that is hard to keep track of. He’s certainly a ladies man and has never dated a woman older than 25. Most recently, he’s dating Camila Morrone, who he has a 22 age difference with. His past ex’s include models Gisele Bundchen and Bar Refaeli.
11. Leo was named after the artist Leonardo da Vinci? Why, you might ask? Because she happened to be standing in front of a da Vinci painting the first time she felt him kick. Creativity must run in the family.
12. Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg weren’t always so tight. They met in 1995 on the set of the heartbreaking film, The Basketball Diaries, but their friendship chemistry wasn’t always on fire. In fact, they didn’t get along at all. Now, they couldn’t be closer.
13. Leonardo DiCaprio could have been Spiderman! He was considered, in 2002, for the iconic role, but out went to childhood friend Tobey Maguire. We have a feeling a lot more women would have seen Spiderman if our bae Leo was in it…
14. Leo is a bit of a prankster! In 2016, he spotted his Wolf of Wall Street co-star in NYC. Instead of saying hi like a normal person, he pranked him by running up to Hill and pretending to be a stalker fan, snapping pics and crossing boundaries. He did get him pretty good, but they hugged it out!
15. Leonardo DiCaprio is no stranger to near death experiences. Once, a great white shark somehow got into his cage while he was diving in South Africa. Then, he saw his own plane’s engine blow up when he was on a Delta Airlines flight. He even went skydiving with knotted parachutes, but thankfully it was a tandem dive so his partner came to the rescue and untangled them.