Leonardo DiCaprio, 50 years as an eternal boy: his Italian origins and the first “kick” at the Uffizi
He made his debut at a very young age in “Growing Pains”, at 21 the role that changed his life forever: it was the beginning of a career studded with successes
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Eternal adolescent with the face of an angel, Leonardo DiCaprio turns fifty. The star of Titanic - he was 21 in the role of Jack that made him famous alongside Kate Winslet - today celebrates half a century with friends and the Italian model Vittoria Ceretti : an Oscar (best actor in 2016 for The Revenant) and five nominations, the last for Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino, a fame as a "party boy" and the cause of the planet for which in 2014 he was named Messenger of Peace of the UN.
His father George DiCaprio, an American cartoonist whose paternal grandparents, Salvatore DiCaprio and Rosina Cassella, were originally from Caserta, and his mother Irmelin Indenbirken, a German legal secretary, named him in homage to Leonardo's Annunciation at the Uffizi. It was DiCaprio himself who said that he kicked his mother Irmelin's belly for the first time while she was looking at Da Vinci's painting: "My father George thought it was a sign, maybe also because DiCaprio doesn't sound very different from Da Vinci. That's how they chose my name."
Raised on bread and cinema in Los Angeles, Leo made his debut at a very young age: he was 16 when in 1991 he filmed the series "Growing Pains" where he played the part of a homeless boy. His film debut was the same year with the low-budget horror "Critters 3" while in 1993 the role of a boy with intellectual disabilities alongside Johnny Depp in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" earned him his first nomination as best supporting actor. The second half of the 90s marked the turning point: in 1996 he played Baz Luhrmann's Romeo (with whom he worked again 18 years later in Great Gatsby) in Romeo + Juliet based literally on Shakespeare's text but set among the gangs of Los Angeles, the following year with Titanic by James Cameron he became the idol of millions of young people.
He was noticed by Martin Scorsese and shot with him Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006) and Shutter Island (2010). Then Killers of the Flower Moon alongside Robert De Niro, who in turn had chosen him at seventeen for This Boy's Life in the role of a young man with an abusive stepfather.
At this point DiCaprio has the luxury of choice: he shoots Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), Django Unchained (2012) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), which earns him another nomination.
In 2014, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon named him Messenger of Peace, in 2015 he received an Oscar, and the following year Time included him among the 100 most influential people on the planet.
The eligible bachelor DiCaprio has been engaged to beautiful women, almost all models and almost all “under 25”: from Gisele Bundchen to Bar Rafaeli to the Argentine Camila Morrone.
Immune to the #MeToo wave, the shadow over his birthday is the lawsuits against Sean “Diddy” Combs. Documented by many paparazzi photos, Leo was years ago among the many VIP guests of the White Parties, the parties in the Hamptons organized by the hip-hop impresario at the center of dozens of red-light lawsuits.
(Online Union)
