When did Leonardo DiCaprio become a good actor?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Honest question, because I think he is genuinely a very good actor. Even when he's playing a complete bastard (the Wolf of Wall Street), he does a good job at it.

But I was watching "The Man in the Iron Mask" yesterday, and while it's not a bad film (it has some decent performances from John Malkovich and Jeremy Irons), DiCaprio's own performance comes off as very wooden and underwhelming, like he's just going through the motion. That movie came out in 1998, right in the wake of Titanic mania. And DiCaprio's easily the worst part of Titanic in terms of performances.

So there has to be a point somewhere between 1998 and today where he started to get considerably better. Maybe it was when all the Titanic fangirl stuff began to fade and he could focus on other roles, because that dogged him for a while.

But then again, he won rave reviews in 1993 for What's Eating Gilbert Grape....so clearly he had talent before then. Maybe it was a matter of him getting better scripts to work with?

[alarimer]

1. Certainly it wasn't on Growing Pains.

But he rubs me the wrong way. I hope he loses. I think it's his naked Oscar ambition that puts me off.

[MADem]

2. In Gilbert Grape, he wasn't "the good looking one."

When he was touted at as a heartthrob, his performance suffered.

When he got older, he got better.

Check him out in "The Depahhhhhhhted." His Billy Costigan character was quite compelling!

[mackerel]

3. He was good in What's Eating Gilbert Grape

[Trajan]

4. Gilbert Grape was a brilliant performance ...

He's had quite a few wonderful films, .... But

Frankly, I don't participate in the 'I hate this artist' discussions ... I don't see the point ... I don't think that every film by Humphrey Bogart was perfectly wonderful, neither Clark Gable, Cary Grant or Laurence Olivier were absolutely perfect in every film they made ...

Not every Mozartian Sonata ...
Not every Beethovian symphony ...
Not every Beatles song. Stones song, Zep song, etc ...

None are perfectly perfect in every instance, so, what do we choose to focus on? ... The greatness or the frail, imperfect humanity of each?

No ... I am not in a personal missIon to find everything I DISLIKE, so I can lay it out and rehash the badness ... Discuss what's awful ... Talk about all the shitty stuff that other people do ... Why?

I would rather focus on the greatness ...

Gilbert Grape was amazing ... So was 'Catch Me if you Can' ... So is his latest movie ...

The same applies to Tom Cruise haters ... WTF? .. Nothing else to do with your life than rag on an occasionally mediocre actor? ... Get a fucking life ...

[Wounded Bear]

5. Yeah, I think we all have our favorite actors and artists in general...

But the Internets seem to demand superlatives out of people. You see it in politics, of course, as well as in movie reviews.

You somehow can't just say something benign like, "That wasn't one of his better roles." You have to go right to the "He sucks!" meme.



On topic, yeah, Gilbert Grape was great, Leo nailed the character there. Johnny Depp was pretty good, too.

As for Titanic? Well I happen to think Carpenter is a little over-rated myself. Most of his movies that people seem to fawn over seem a wee bit derivative and canned for the most part. Hell, even Spielberg has a tendency to fall back on cliche story objects and set piece scenes. Perhaps they 'do it better' than others, but in the final analysis it's a lot of more of the same if you really drill down into it.

[Skittles]

17. I completely agree with your assessment

[GoCubsGo]

32. He should have gotten an Oscar for Gilbert Grape.

I recall that he got a "Best Supporting Actor" nomination for it, as well as a Golden Globes nomination.

[MissMillie]

33. +1

good stuff

[lunatica]

6. He was really good in This Boy's Life with Robert De Niro in 1993

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108330/

[BeyondGeography]

10. +1

The answer to the OP is, "a very long time ago."

[Beaverhausen]

34. +1000

He was amazing in that film.

[Mendocino]

7. He's a movie star,

not an actor. I can't see him other than LD playing a role, and poorly at that. Short range, same old mannerisms in nearly every film, just does the star thing, banging supermodels, and trying to come across as relevant.

[Paladin]

8. "The Departed" is where I started noticing his abilities. (nt)

[Arugula Latte]

9. He was very good even as a child in "Gilbert Grape," and "This Boy's Life," etc.

[TexasBushwhacker]

14. The Quick and the Dead too

Sharon Stone really fought to have him cast as the young gunslinger, to the point of paying his salary.

[egduj]

11. I think he's always been a very good actor.

But like almost every good actor, there's going to be a few clunkers in the resume.

[First Speaker]

12. The short answer: Martin Scorcese

...he used Leo in a lot of films, and his craftsmanship grew under Scorcese's tutelage...I began noticing how good he was in *The Aviator*...

[red dog 1]

28. Leo was good in Martin Scorcese's "The Aviator"

I own a copy of it, and have watched it many, many times.

One thing that bugs me about that movie though, is that Howard Hughes had a mustache from the time he was about 19 or 20; but in "The Aviator", Leo doesn't have a mustache until he's playing a much older Howard Hughes.

I wonder if that's because Leo wanted to grow his own mustache, and it took him that long to do so?

[TuxedoKat]

13. I think it was

when he did, "Catch Me if You Can". It was the first time I was impressed with his acting.

[hibbing]

15. I liked that one too and thought he was very good

I've always liked him. I thought he was good in Wolf of Wall Street too, but I liked the movie itself and of course that always helps.

Peace

[TuxedoKat]

19. Yes

He was good in that too. I should have been clearer -- I liked him in everything since I saw him in Catch Me if You Can, which was years earlier. Did you read the book? It's a great read -- goes quickly too. The guy who wrote it went on to become a speaker at corporate events, etc. One of my former supervisors, an airline exec., saw him and said he was fascinating.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

25. I'd love Catch Me if You Can

funny and interesting movie.... especially since it was based on true story.

[Codeine]

16. He was great in The Basketball Diaries. nt

[justiceischeap]

22. I was blown away by his performance in this movie

I think a lot of his talent depends on the crew he's working with.

[Major Nikon]

18. I think he's a good actor, but not a great actor

His dialog always seems to have the same tone. His facial expressions and mannerisms don't seem to change much from one movie to the next. The notable exception here is Blood Diamond, in which he pulled off a difficult role pretty well. I've always thought of him as a somewhat less charismatic version of Keanu Reeves or Tom Cruise in that he evidently has enough of a box office draw in order to attract films with a high cinematographic quality, but not enough talent to really deserve them. It may be because the films people seem to think he did really well just weren't my cup of tea for other reasons. I did like him quite a bit in Shutter Island, but if you watch Gangs of New York and note how he performs next to Daniel Day-Lewis, his shortcomings become pretty apparent.

[kwassa]

20. I agree, though he is better than Reeves or Cruise.

Reeves is particularly limited.

[NewJeffCT]

26. I think most actors

would pale in comparison to Daniel Day Lewis.

I agree, though, that Leonardo is generally better than Tom Cruise, but both seem to play the same type of character most of the time. Though, I did think Cruise did a good job with the over the hill rocker in the hot mess "Rock of Ages" and he was supposedly good in "Tropic Thunder," which I have not seen, also playing against type.

[red dog 1]

29. I'm no fan of Tom Cruise; but he was great in "Collateral" with Jamie Foxx

If you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth renting on Netflix.

(I'm not a "Top Gun" fan either)

[NewJeffCT]

31. back when Top Gun came out

I refused to see it because it just seemed like a recruiting film for the Air Force. I still have never seen it, though I don't have any special dislike of Cruise - to be honest, I was actually happy that he did not have a romance with the cool female lead in the last Mission Impossible movie (Rogue Nation with Rebecca Ferguson), as their age difference of 20-25 years was way too common for Hollywood movies, but not as common IRL.

[laundry_queen]

35. Blood diamond was great. nt

[mgmaggiemg]

21. u obviously didn't see basketball diaries

watch it on netflix...cheers, Maggie

[U4ikLefty]

23. Silver Spoons. nt

[gratuitous]

24. He did a really good job in "Inception"

He plays a brittle old pro, right at the edge (maybe over the edge?) of his limit in a very demanding field. Ignore the silliness of the premise of infiltrating other people's dreams, and DeCaprio's performance is really good. He's by turns the seasoned pro and instructor, the burnout, the barely keeping it together grieving widower, and the loving father mourning the separation from his kids. He can never tell when his mind will betray him, and the strain gets to him at times.

[Orsino]

27. Titanic.

More to the point, the enormous and enduring success of Titanic has led to the brain-dead assumption that his turn for an Oscar must eventually come around. The press wonders whether he will be "snubbed" once again, and fans nod their heads, outraged.

[red dog 1]

30. I think he's been a good actor for quite awhile now, although I haven't seen all his films

One memory of him as an ordinary guy and not a famous actor was when he appeared in a short film about the illusionist David Blaine on TV.

Leo is genuinely a fan of David Blaine's, as am I.

(I once saw a TV video where David Blaine was outside a restaurant doing a card trick; and, at one point, he threw the whole deck of cards at the window of the restaurant, (much to the chagrin of a woman sitting inside the restaurant) and the card that the person outside had "picked" mysteriously appeared on the window INSIDE the restaurant...How the hell did he do that?)

I like Leo.