DiCaprio’s latest film meets awards-bait criteria
It’s too bad that Leonardo DiCaprio never played Oliver Twist, because for the past several years it seems he’s been holding out his hands as if to say, “Please sir, may I have an Academy Award?”
And every time, he gets shut out. He’s in the conversation, but he never gets picked. There are four movies that garnered best actor nominations: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond and The Wolf of Wall Street.
But DiCaprio has also starred in a string of films in which he was clearly courting the award and didn’t even get recognized — J. Edgar, Revolutionary Road, The Departed, Catch Me If You Can and Gangs of New York among them.
Will this coming year be different?
The 40-year-old appears to have thrown all his energy into The Revenant, set to hit theatres on Christmas Day.
After releasing a teaser in July, 20th Century Fox released the first full-length trailer for the film Tuesday.
The nearly three-minute clip certainly hits the awards-bait checklist: It has a name-brand director (Alejandro González Iñárritu’s last film, Birdman, racked up a slew of Oscars in February, including for best picture and director); it’s based on a true story; and it features a transformed DiCaprio, complete with dirty, stringy hair, tortuously chapped lips and bad teeth.
You see, Academy? After playing pretty boys Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby) and Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street), DiCaprio has prostrated himself at your feet, tousling a bear, getting buried in dirt and submerging himself in freezing cold mud and rain for the sake of his craft.
He’s even gone all clean-shaven and respectable after years of seemingly not caring about his reputation as a hairy Lothario who has a flip-book of 20-something model ex-girlfriends. (The latest lady in his life is 25-yearold Kelly Rohrbach, who told Esquire in June that she is “definitely quick-witted” and “can hang with the guys.”)
Please sir, may I have an Oscar now?