Why Hollywood Once Told Leonardo DiCaprio He Would Never Make It as a Star
At the start of his career, Hollywood gatekeepers told Leonardo DiCaprio he’d never be a movie star because his name was too ethnic.
File this under: things Hollywood used to say with a straight face. Leonardo DiCaprio says his first agent tried to rebrand him because his real name was, quote, too ethnic. Yes, too ethnic. And yes, they had a new name ready to go.
On the New Heights podcast, while chatting with Benicio del Toro, DiCaprio laid out the whole thing: the agent insisted no one would hire a kid named Leonardo DiCaprio and pitched a full makeover. The plan was to turn his middle name into a last name and call him Lenny. Lenny Williams. Try saying that out loud without seeing a 90s sitcom neighbor holding a skateboard.
Over my dead body.
That was DiCaprio's dad, after seeing the agent's rebranded headshot. He literally tore it up. Good call, dad — 'Titanic' starring Kate Winslet and Lenny Williams is not the timeline I want to live in. Del Toro, for his part, hinted he got similar guidance early on, joking about a proposed nickname: Benny Del. Inside baseball, but not rare: actors have been nudged into stage names for decades, either because of casting biases, marketing squeamishness, or simply because someone else already had the name.
DiCaprio and del Toro's next team-up
DiCaprio and del Toro will soon share the screen in Paul Thomas Anderson's 'One Battle After Another,' a project loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon's 'Vineland.' DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, a former revolutionary who goes back into the fire when an old enemy pops back up and his daughter needs rescuing. Early reactions have been borderline giddy — some are calling it Anderson's most purely entertaining film and even one of the best of the decade. We get to test that hype soon: it hits theaters September 26.
- Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, Tayana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Wood Harris, Alana Haim
And after that: another Scorsese reunion
DiCaprio is also set to reteam with Martin Scorsese, co-starring with Jennifer Lawrence in a film based on Peter Cameron's novel 'What Happens At Night.' The setup is a spooky one: an American couple travels to a small European town to adopt a baby, and pretty much everything starts to feel off. Consider me intrigued.