In 2002, Leonardo DiCaprio’s career was in a slow transition phase. The naturally talented actor, who performed an Oscar worthy performance at only 19 in the critically praised 1993 film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, had become synonymous with films like Titanic and Romeo and Juliet. He was being met with roles in films like The Beach, where he was little more than a hot guy with a shirt off.
2002 changed that with the release of Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can. In both films DiCaprio showed phenomenal range, depicting the vengeful Amsterdam Vallon along with the compulsive con artist Frank Abagnale Jr. The films were period pieces set in completely different times, one being Civil War era New York City and the other being New Frontier era mid-century America.
Director Martin Scorsese, who directed Gangs of New York, renewed working with DiCaprio for 2004’s The Aviator, an excellent biopic focusing on the career of industrialist Howard Hughes. The film started with Hughes being depicted as seemingly the most successful and fearless man on earth, however, progressing into a madness brought about by his severe case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. By the end of the film, Hughes was repeating sentences to himself in front of a mirror. The portrayal of Hughes was fascinating enough to push me into researching Hughes’ life in depth, and that research led me to believe that Scorsese and DiCaprio had portrayed Hughes not only accurately but with finesse.
Scorsese’s collaboration with DiCaprio continued with the 2006 film The Departed, which showed the corruption of a police officer, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) and the righteous vigilantism of a juvenile delinquent turned undercover cop, Bill Costigan (DiCaprio). Costigan is the hero, fighting undercover to take down mafia boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) while courting Sullivan’s girl, who he is too impotent to please.
With the upcoming release of Scorsese’s Shutter Island, a 1950s period piece in which DiCaprio plays a US Marshall investigating the escape from a mental institution of a female murderer, he appears to be taking the place of Robert DeNiro as Martin Scorsese’s chief muse. The Aviator won DiCaprio an Oscar nomination, and if DiCaprio and Scorsese continue to release the quality work they have been producing for the last seven years, DiCaprio could find himself becoming an Oscar-winning actor. The days of Tiger Beat covers, Romeo and Juliet and Titanic will be just a bad memory.
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