'I spent hours with Leo'

For a young woman who has spent two hours alone with Leonardo DiCaprio, Amy Adler is remarkably laid back about the experience.

Unlike most of her contemporaries, this American artist was not so much intrigued by him as what he represents - fame and celebrity.

Hence the exhibition of her unique portraits of him - photographs of her pastel drawings of her photographs of him - which opens at the Photographers' Gallery in Covent Garden today.

"I am not interested in prying into personal lives," she says, "but I am interested in that area between anonymity and celebrity, and I thought that he might be interested.

"I just found a way to present the idea for him and he went for it. I think he has got an interest in art, following young artists and stuff."

So Leonardo popped around to her studio in Los Angeles for a couple of hours while Amy shot a roll of film. "They are very much like taking pictures of a friend," she explained. "They are really casual. We were just having a conversation, and we basically talked about art. He wanted to know about my work. I did not want it to be like a studio shoot.

"When I was photographing him, he was just this ordinary guy, totally relaxed, and then, perhaps because he flicked his hair, I was suddenly aware that he was this incredible character who anybody would recognise.

"It was really exciting and it was also very curious to stand face-to-face and not have any clue . . . " It was a sentence that she never finished.

DiCaprio is the first celebrity the 34-year-old has photographed in person, although she has used images of other stars such as Jodie Foster, Britney Spears and River Phoenix in the past.

In these instances, she has borrowed pictures of them taken by other photographers for CDs, videos or magazines.