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12 Leonardo DiCaprio Facts You Probably Don’t Know

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 01:06 PST, Jan 29, 2016

Leonardo DiCaprio has waited a long time for an Oscar win, and it is very likely that this is his year.

He has been nominated for his role in The Revenant, something most folks know by now. However, there are a lot of interesting facts that many people don’t know about the talented actor.

1. Buzzfeed reports that Leonardo DiCaprio made a movie with Tobey Maguire called Don’s Plum. The movie was so bad DiCaprio took legal action to ensure that it was never released in movie theaters. Check out the trailer.

2. Vladimir Putin is a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio, and at a tiger summit, Putin called DiCaprio a “real man.”

“Here, in Russia, we call such a person a real man. If wildlife and tiger conservation is in the hands of people with such character, we are destined to succeed.”

3. When Leonardo DiCaprio was 11, an agent tried to get him to change his name to Lenny Williams because his name sounded too ethnic. DiCaprio told Shortlist about it.

“They felt my name was too ethnic and I wouldn’t get as many jobs. So that thwarted me from being an actor for a number of years. I tried again two years later when I was 13 and got an agent to accept me with my name.”

4. Swide reports that Leonardo DiCaprio owns an island off the coast of Belize called Blackadore Cay. He intends to use the 104-acre island to build an eco-friendly resort.

5. Leonardo DiCaprio has booked a trip to fly to space on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. The cost of a seat on the DiCaprio flight was $1 million. When he does fly, it will be on the SpaceShip Two.

6. A shark has nothing over Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio described on The Ellen DeGeneres Show how he was involved in a shark attack and lived to tell the tale.

7. Leonardo DiCaprio has a vitamin C shower! In an apartment of his in Manhattan, which has WELL certification, DiCaprio has vitamin C showers and even a wellness concierge.

8. Leonardo DiCaprio has his own line of fair-trade coffee called Lyon. Apparently, he is a huge fan of the beverage.

9. Boomsbeat reports that Leonardo DiCaprio was originally supposed to star in American Psycho, but he had conflicts in his schedule and had to let go of the $20 million role. The role ultimately went to Christian Bale.

10. Jay Gatsby, in The Great Gatsby, was a role that was of great interest to Leonardo DiCaprio because the character was a man who truly created himself.

“[He was drawn to] the idea of a man who came from absolutely nothing, who created himself solely from his own imagination. Gatsby’s one of those iconic characters because he can be interpreted in so many ways: a hopeless romantic, a completely obsessed wacko or a dangerous gangster, clinging to wealth.”

11. Leonardo DiCaprio loves playing historical figures and extensively researched his role for Edgar Hoover.

“I do love playing historical figures simply because there’s so much incredibly diverse interesting information about a character when you can research their life. A lot of the stuff you’d never be able to make up as a writer.”

12. Apparently, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg had an immediate on-screen chemistry, as Wahlberg once described.

“So I come in and I do the audition and I kind of look at him and he kind of looks at me, and then we do a scene, and they’re like, ‘Hmm, this f***ing dude’s pretty good, right?'”

[Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images]

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tobey maguire Vladimir Putin Mark Wahlberg Leonardo DiCaprio
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