Then, I defy you stars

When Leonardo DiCaprio took home the Best Actor statuette at the 88th Academy Awards, the goodwill surrounding his victory was palpable. At last, after having been overlooked by the Academy time and time again, he has triumphed, leaving Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Sir Ian McKellen and Tom Cruise on the never-won-an-Oscar list once and for all. Yes: “As Hugh Glass in The Revenant” has just become the correct response to one of tomorrow’s pub quiz trivia questions.

Strangely, it felt as if we were handed the trophy, too. Now 41, DiCaprio grew up onscreen, before our eyes. From his up-and-comer teenage period — in which he brilliantly held his own against Robert De Niro in This Boy’s Life, the movie from 1993 that wasn’t What’s Eating Gilbert Grape — to the present, it seems as if he settled into his niche as perhaps the most ambitious A-lister working in Hollywood with us by his side, cheering him on as he hunts in the bush with South African mercenaries, sticks a lit candle up his ass and pursues yet another prestige project. 

Complicated Characters

But despite DiCaprio’s career-long commitment to playing complicated characters instead of picking roles for empty financial gain, I couldn’t help but think that the Academy only gave him the damn thing as a way to tell him to move on. If its members truly believed in DiCaprio’s talent, they should’ve awarded him the prize long ago. In 2005’s The Aviator, his performance as the doomed Howard Hughes revealed a former teen pin-up coming into his own by embodying a character that was slowly falling apart.

In an industry built on relationships such as show business, peer recognition is just as powerful as its absence. It’s astounding that he didn’t get a nod for either Catch Me If You Can or Gangs of New York, for instance, which saw him move further away from next-big-thing to legitimate serious actor. That he got snubbed for J. Edgar, The Departed and Shutter Island, a personal favorite, is similarly puzzling.

Comfort Zone

I’d hate to call this one a pity Oscar, but it’s not entirely impossible. The actor himself hinted at it on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show in January: “The truth of the matter is that I’ve been in situations before where I’ve thought films or performances, either mine or others, should be either nominated more or adored by the public, or critics should revere it more.”

So, now that Leonardo DiCaprio has conquered the Oscars — a TV show in a world that doesn’t watch TV, devoted to films hardly anyone makes any more —will we finally see him outside his comfort zone? It would be truly refreshing, a testament to his uncanny ability to constantly upend our expectations of him, if he evolved his matinee-idol-with-soul appeal by starring in, for instance, a romantic comedy or a comic book flick. His hero Jack Nicholson, to whom he bears a striking resemblance, has done both and still remains celebrated.  

Livewire Intensity

But lighthearted Leo will have to wait. In the meantime, as part of his new partnership with Netflix to bring more cause-oriented films to audiences, he is in the process of producing a new environmental documentary. While no title or release date has been announced, he did reveal that the project has filmed all over — from Argentina to the Arctic, and China to India — most likely continuing where his 2007 climate change documentary The 11th Hour left off. “It was an eye-opening experience,” DiCaprio told Parade. “We’re absolutely digging our own ecological grave.”

DiCaprio is also reportedly teaming up with director Martin Scorsese once again in The Devil in the White City, about the rise and capture of the 19th century American serial killer H.H. Holmes. He is likewise set to star in The Crowded Room, the true story of schizophrenic Billy Milligan, the first man to successfully use multiple personality disorder as a defense in a court of law.

According to The Guardian, The Crowded Room is one of Hollywood’s longest-gestating projects, film was first mooted in the early 1990s with James Cameron tipped to write and direct. DiCaprio has been interested in it, both as headliner and producer, since 1997. If he pulls off getting under the skin of a remarkable 24 characters — from a lesbian rapist to an uptight Englishman — with his trademark livewire intensity, then he may just be in the running for another Best Actor trophy.