Leonardo DiCaprio recalls burning stunt men with flamethrowers, shutting production down, and collaborating with his favourite directors: ‘I was 15 years old and I knew…’

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He then moved to his early days as an actor, where he worked on the popular sitcom Growing Pains, which led him to other Hollywood gigs. “I came from doing commercials and after-school specials. I was on a great TV show for a year, called Growing Pains. Very luckily, I got the chance to work alongside Robert De Niro in This Boy’s Life (1993), and that propelled my film career, and then it was about the next choice. There were two opportunities in front of me, and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) was the one they were hesitant to hire me on. But I worked really hard on that character, and it was my first experience of real character development,” said Leo.

The actor then talked about Anderson and Quentin Tarantino and said, “Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino are cinephiles, and they both have a reverence for cinema history. Paul brought us to so many locations that infused our characters with the reality of the ecosystem around us — Quentin is the same way. I remember driving down Hollywood Boulevard, and I turned a corner, and you’re suddenly in 1969 Hollywood. 7 straight blocks of some of the most touristic places in LA being completely transformed to represent the culture of that time was just mind-boggling.”

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. (Photo: IMDb)

He added, “I remember taking a real flamethrower and torching down some of the greatest stuntmen in cinema history. He (Quentin) brought them all in a room to play Nazis, and I burnt them for three days in a row.”

Talking about his days on the sets of The Wolf of Wall Street, Leo said, “Martin Scorsese has these very deliberate screenings for days to get across the essence of what he wants. Marty wanted to show an air of opulence and decadence. One of my biggest moments was the dialogue, ‘I am not leaving,’ and I had tonsillitis the day before, and we had to shut down production. But it was great because I got time to think about all the different beats of that speech.”