Leo's got a new life

New man: Leo admits he has changed his whole lifestyle

10 April 2012

Leonardo DiCaprio is a changed man. Today he looks remarkably calm and composed, considering he's just run the gauntlet of a mob of fans who'd been waiting for hours in the snow and ice outside his New York hotel.

In the past, he would have grumbled about the pressures of celebrity, but now, after three years out of the limelight, he smiles graciously at fans and poses happily for photographers.

He's here to bang the drum for his two upcoming films, Martin Scorsese's epic Gangs Of New York and the lighter, Steven Spielberg directed Catch Me If You Can. 'I've done my share of complaining in the past,' he admits, 'but really, I've got the greatest job in the world. I'm so lucky.' He grins boyishly. 'It's great to be back, although I never intended to take such a long break.'

After the massive success of Titanic, DiCaprio became the heartthrob du jour, with a tabloid profile to match. He followed Titanic with The Man In The Iron Mask and The Beach, then dropped out of film work for three years.

During that time he found out the hard way who his real friends are. 'All of a sudden I was surrounded by vultures,' he says. 'It was a huge learning experience for me. It brought me closer to the people who knew me before I was anything.'

These days, he says, he hangs out with a group of 10 old friends, mostly actors, who he calls 'my boys'. 'I don't really have time for new friends,' he says. 'I'm not closed off to new encounters with people but I'm not looking for new friends. I've got my boys.'

During what he calls his three-year 'hiatus', the paparazzi caught him leaving nightclubs with various different women and, despite an on-off relationship with Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen, he gained a reputation as a party animal and serial womaniser. 'I'm not going to say that I wasn't a bit of a Don Juan, but I'm not like that any more,' DiCaprio protests. 'I just like a girl with a sense of humour who doesn't automatically make her mind up about me before she's talked to me.'

At 28, his thoughts are even starting to turn to marriage. 'I don't think I'm going to get married any time soon, but you never know,' he says. 'I think first and foremost you have to be friends with the person.

If you're not friends and they can't accept you completely for who you are and have forgiveness, then there's no way it's going to work.' He pauses and laughs. 'But what the hell do I know? I'm just a young whippersnapper.'

As he chats away, it seems DiCaprio has come a long way from the ill-at-ease, reticent young man he used to be. He puts some of that down to the huge influence his mother, Irmelin, a German immigrant who arrived in America after the Second World War, still plays in his life. 'I can only hope to find a woman who possesses half the qualities of my mother,' he says quietly. 'She is one of the most hard-working, loving people I've ever met.

When I was a child we lived in a very poor neighbourhood, and she spent four hours a day driving me to the best possible school she could. She committed her life to giving me the most that she could and I love her unconditionally for that.'

He drew on his mother's stories to help him forge his character as the Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon in Gangs Of New York. Released from a reformatory into a lawless New York slum, and despised by the American-born 'nativists', Vallon becomes a gang leader. 'Just listening to my mother's amazing stories of being born in a bomb shelter and coming to America helped me understand what it was like for immigrants to try to cut out a section in the

Irmelin divorced DiCaprio's father, George, an Italian-American former comic-book distributor and film producer, when Leo was a child, although the family has remained close. 'I had the best of both worlds, because although my parents split up, I lived a block away from one or the other of them during a long period of my life.

'I would run through the back yard of one and go straight to the other's house. It was fantastic. In a way, my father influenced my career more than anyone. He's the ultimate Buddha figure to me. He's just the most intelligent person I've ever met.'

DiCaprio has also developed a passionate interest in the environment and is doing his bit by driving an electric car around Los Angeles and trying to convert everyone he knows to the cause. 'It's a dangerous game we're playing with planet Earth right now,' he says earnestly, 'and unfortunately, as much as we try to recycle and do the best we can, it really is in the hands of our government.

The United States is a role model for the rest of the world and if we don't take a stance and turn to green technology, it's going to be much more difficult for the rest of the world to do it. We have renewable energy resources at our disposal right now but unfortunately it has a lot to do with the oil companies and profit and bureaucracy.'

While spreading the word, he is also preparing for his next film, The Aviator, on which he will team up with Scorsese again to film the story of aviation pioneer and Hollywood recluse Howard Hughes. 'I'm going to get up there and pilot a plane or two to get to know what that world was like, because aviation during the Thirties was the equivalent of landing on the moon,' he enthuses.

Although Hughes, too, had a way with women, DiCaprio is more interested in the challenge of portraying a complex character for a director he likes and admires. 'Believe it or not, I didn't go into acting with the intention of being a heartthrob or a movie star or appealing to young females,' he says. 'I went into it to make great movies and that's my main thing right now.'

Gangs Of New York opens Fri 10 Jan, Catch Me If You Can opens Fri 31 Jan

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