I did imitations of anyone who came to my parents’ house, and that was my identity at school – if there were ten minutes to lunch, and the teacher was done with the lesson, he’d say, ‘Okay, Leo, get up there and do something.’ – Leonardo DiCaprio
I’ve never been Romeo who meets a girl and falls for her immediately. It’s been a much slower process for me each time I’ve gone into a relationship. – Leonardo DiCaprio
To be honest, I’m not really prepared to do a musical, simply because I think I have a pretty atrocious voice. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I saw all the moral decay you could, beginning at 2 years old. But I also got to see how the other half lived. – Leonardo DiCaprio
Brothers don’t necessarily have to say anything to each other – they can sit in a room and be together and just be completely comfortable with each other. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I was always the kid in school who tried to get attention, not necessarily the class clown, but I’d do little unexpected performances. – Leonardo DiCaprio
School, I never truly got the knack of. I could never focus on things I didn’t want to learn. Math is just the worst. To this day, I can’t concentrate on it. People always say, ‘You should have tried harder.’ But actually, I cheated a lot because I could not sit and do homework. – Leonardo DiCaprio
My friends have named me the person they least want to do extreme adventures with, because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster. If a cat has nine lives, I think I’ve used a few. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I really hate relaxing. I’ve done three movies in a row, worked for two years straight, and to me, idle time is the devil’s workshop. I like to focus on something. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I have learned from my experiences in this industry that there is absolutely no way to control people’s opinions on your performance in your movie. You go out there, promote your film and hope people like the work you did. – Leonardo DiCaprio
When you are given an opportunity to make a film like ‘Body of Lies’ – and I would put ‘Blood Diamond’ in the same category – of course you jump at these opportunities. – Leonardo DiCaprio
Hoover was incredibly ambitious as a young man. He was highly motivated to succeed in Washington, primarily due to his mother’s expectations of him. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I realise that I do not change the course of history. I am an actor, I do a movie, that’s the end of it. You have to realise we are just clowns for hire. After I had success it was great, at first, not to worry about money. It was on my mind when I was growing up. – Leonardo DiCaprio
As a kid, I was going to be a marine biologist or an actor. When I became successful as an actor, I said, ‘Well, maybe I can lend a voice to this with an equal passion.’ You realize how lucky we are and how destructive we’ve been and what little regard we have for the natural world. – Leonardo DiCaprio
Hopefully I’ve gotten better as an actor as the years have gone on, but the type of work I want to do has never changed. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I’m not the kind of person who tries to be cool or trendy, I’m definitely an individual. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I’ve managed to keep a clear head and remain sane in this business because I remain a kid off-camera. – Leonardo DiCaprio
If you have the ability to convince somebody of something that you don’t necessarily think is the case, it’s a valuable asset. Not that I’m, like, a pathological liar, but we spend most of the day not fully being honest, you know? – Leonardo DiCaprio
The bottom line is, when it comes to an actor and his performance, whether nominated or not, it simply has to do with whether that character had enough resonance with the audience. You know, to the filmgoers. And that something that you can’t control. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I don’t watch anything of mine much. I haven’t gone to drama school, or college, either. I just like to watch other actors in action. I learned so much from working with De Niro. I’d be in a scene with him where I was supposed to be acting, and I was just watching. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I want to be a jerk like the rest of my friends, and have fun, and not care about the consequences, but I just can’t now. – Leonardo DiCaprio
Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I really don’t know what I’m doing… I don’t. It’s terrible. I go in there and I learn how to be like the character and do the best I can, and that’s all I really do. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I don’t ask other actors questions. I think that’s too intrusive. I just watch. I don’t want to be constricted to an idea of what acting is by anyone else. I want to take my own education. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I just want to keep doing what I’m doing and hopefully people will watch my movies. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I had a period when I was sixteen where I started to get a big head. I was going through puberty, and I was nominated for an Academy Award. My head got inflated. My friends were the real ones who said, ‘You’re acting different.’ But the truth is that I don’t need that, because I don’t get out of hand. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I am completely open to doing a romantic comedy, but I will never do something just for the sake of doing a specific genre or because it’s the time or place to do a different type of movie. I think that would be a huge mistake. – Leonardo DiCaprio
I’ve always been a slow starter. My first date was with a girl called Cessi. We had a beautiful relationship over the phone all summer, and then when we met, I couldn’t look her in the eye. – Leonardo DiCaprio