Leonardo DiCaprio Q&A

23 March 2009

An actor with acclaimed performances in films such as This Boy’s Life, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? and The Basketball Diaries to his name, Leonardo DiCaprio became a global superstar playing the lead in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet and swiftly followed it up with the box office smash Titanic.

Since then he has amassed an impressive range of credits, headlining films such as The Gangs of New York, Catch Me If You Can, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, The Departed and Revolutionary Road, garnering three Oscar nominations in the process.

In Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies he is reunited with Russell Crowe, with whom he co-starred in The Quick & The Dead in 1995. He plays CIA operative Roger Ferris, working under Crowe’s Washington bound yet all seeing character Ed Hoffman in a murky tale of contemporary Middle Eastern politics.

What was the biggest challenge in working with Ridley Scott?

You have to try and encompass how much work Ridley has done throughout his career, and how comfortable he is in his craft. So much of the moviemaking process is waiting around for a director to figure out what they want, and here you have a director who is so precise and trims so much of the fat out of the process that none of it is a waste of time.

He instinctively reacts to things immediately on an actor’s level, such as whether he believes it or doesn’t, or he believes a scene will serve its purpose. The end result is that you walk away from making a movie probably a month and a half sooner than you would with most other filmmakers.

So how does he achieve that?

He sets up multiple cameras so that he has you covered from every different angle, and he’s able to control 20 different departments simultaneously. As an actor it makes you trust your instincts, because he trusts you and relies on you to know your character, and know how your character will react in any situation that he throws at you.

That instils a confidence in you. It’s a great working relationship and it’s different to most directors I’ve worked with, but it’s exhilarating and fantastic, it really is. I’d love to do it again.

Your character, Roger Ferris, is unusually sympathetic in this shady cloak and dagger world. Was that what appealed to you about him?

I liked this character a lot. I felt like, certainly in a turbulent time like we’re living in now while the US is occupying the Middle East, here you have a highly trained CIA operative who is very effective at what he does, who isn’t looking for that quick fix, the appearance of victory.

He’s looking for long term solutions and trying to respect the culture there and respect their ways, but ultimately be patriotic and pursue a positive result. Meanwhile his country is constantly undermining him. I feel like my character was operating in a higher moral context than his country would like him to, and that’s a fascinating character for me.

And he changes during the course of the film, doesn’t he?

He goes on a long journey in which he isn’t beholden to any country or idealistic thought, or political regime. He’s his own man and he doesn’t necessarily believe in the war any more and he walks off into the middle of the desert. I thought what a great character to be able to play, certainly at a time like this.

Did you study the Arabic dialects your character speaks, or was it done phonetically?

I don’t remember any of the language now. I got to work with a dialect coach who helped with all the different Arabic dialects, but it was very difficult. I have to work at it just like anything else.

I also have a great dialect coach Tim Monich who’s helped me in a lot of the films that I’ve done. But this was the hardest because it comes from a place in my throat that I don’t normally ever say any words in.

How physically demanding was this role?

I’ve done films that were similar in that regard. The pace of this movie was very demanding. I did most of my own stunts, there were certain sequences like I say, with Ridley Scott where I physically can’t be in two places at one time.

So if you’re doing an overhead helicopter shot down the block, you race there and try to be there, but he’s going to get his day in that location.

It was very physically demanding. Russell Crowe will attest to it, you walk away battered and bruised but still it’s a lot of fun, and of course he keeps the whole environment as safe as he can. It comes with the territory of doing movies like this. You expect that kind of stuff to happen.

What about the scene where you are tortured, how was that to film?

People are always wondering what the big injury story is mine was that I got a cold. The torture scene was a very important sequence for me. I don’t even like to use that term, it’s an interrogation scene. We knew that was a pivotal moment in the movie and that the film wouldn’t have the same weight, the same intensity or realism, unless that sequence was as authentic as possible. So that was the scene that I put the most thought and energy into, to try to be authentic.

I spoke to the ex-head of the CIA actually, and CIA operatives, to ask what would a person in this situation do. What would he reveal to the enemy? Would he be thinking about his country? Would he be thinking about his own survival? What would the enemy try to extract from him information-wise?

All this stuff was culminating in a really hard, three day sequence in an underground tomb in the middle of Morocco. And I got a chest cold afterwards.

Your character is somebody who’s trying to hold onto normality and humanity in a world where those things are irrelevant is that something you can relate to from your experience of fame?

I don’t think I could at all compare the job of what these people do in the armed forces, and what they do for our country, in comparison to my job as an actor being followed by paparazzi. They’re two entirely different animals.

I think the general consensus amongst people blessed enough to be able to do what we do is that we entirely understand that, although you may hear the odd complaint here and there, we entirely understand that it comes with the territory and the responsibility of doing what we do.

Otherwise we would quit. I think we’re a very lucky and fortunate group of people who have very little to complain about, especially when you talk about the comparison to people that are risking their lives to save our country it’s impossible to compare the two.

You worked with Russell Crowe in the 1990s of course, how was it working with him again?

I got to work with when I was 18 years old. He’d done Romper Stomper, I just did What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, so there we were converging on this big budget movie called The Quick and the Dead starring Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone.

We forged a friendship there on that set, because we didn’t know where to fit in. We didn’t belong to the character actor group or the movie star group.

I remember talking to him about movies a lot back then, the type of actor that he wanted to be, the type of films that he liked and he’s still the same guy that he was back then.

He’s incredibly funny, he’s committed to his work, is a fantastic actor and great to be around. I have nothing but great things to say about him, and I was happy to reunite with him on this movie, because I think he’s developed an incredible body of work and given some unforgettable performances.

So tell us, how many times did you get to kick him over in his chair in the film?

That was one of the first sequences in the movie, actually. That was Ridley’s suggestion, to kick off our relationship in the movie. I believe that may even have been the second day of shooting. Ridley was very insistent that I kick Russell over in his chair, because we were talking about other ways in which Roger would express himself, after he’d just risked his life, to his CIA superior. That’s what we came up with. It kept making Ridley laugh to see Russell tumble off that chair.