Leonardo DiCaprio's Acting Career Has Been Built On Being Vulnerable. Very Very Vulnerable

Today, Leonardo DiCaprio is known as “one of the last movie stars.” Alongside Denzel Washington, Sandra Bullock, and Jack Black, he’s one of the few famous faces who can reliably draw audiences to their local multiplex. Why else would Warner Bros. sink $125+ million into his new movie, One Battle After Another, a Thomas Pynchon adaptation from director Paul Thomas Anderson?

There was a point, though, where it looked like his star image was on the wane. In November 2002, DiCaprio was preparing to launch his “auteur movie star” phase with the holiday season 2002 movies Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can. To celebrate this career pivot, The New York Times published a piece entitled “The Kid Stays in the Picture” examining how, after Titanic launched him to stardom, DiCaprio had trouble keeping up his momentum. “Even the public turned against him … DiCaprio soon became better known for catting around nightclubs than for acting … [DiCaprio] wants to erase the tabloid memories of his past, to reclaim his mantle as a young genius.”

Given his modern reputation, it’s clear DiCaprio did just that. Ironically, though, he accomplished that by leaning into that career downturn. One of the last movie stars hasn’t channeled John Wayne stoicism. Instead, Leonardo DiCaprio carved a filmography out of vulnerability and outright schlubbiness.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Susceptibility Even Informed His Earliest Performances
The famous poster for 1992’s romantic drama The Bodyguard depicts Kevin Costner lifting up Whitney Houston and carrying her through the rain. “Here’s a man,” the poster suggested, “strong enough to lift up a lady in any struggle.” Bill Pullman is similarly lifting up Sanda Bullock on the While You Were Sleeping poster, while Richard Gere is standing toe-to-toe with Julia Roberts on the Pretty Woman poster. They epitomize traditional male romantic leads in this era: Strong. Equal to, and sometimes even stronger than, the women they interact with. They can pull you out in any situation.

Young Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack in Titanic, meanwhile, memorably established the actor’s gift for profoundly susceptible characters from the start. Jack could still save Kate Winslet’s Rose in a pinch, and exerted dominance in certain Titanic sequences. However, the film’s most memorable set pieces involved him chained to a pipe in a flooding room or freezing to death to save Rose. The character’s youthfulness was constantly emphasized to accentuate how much danger he was in as the titular ship sank.

Audiences around the world swooned for DiCaprio’s Jack. However, he was not an invulnerable He-Man. The actor’s breakthrough work in Titanic established that DiCaprio’s bread and butter was playing discernibly vulnerable souls who were always in over their heads.

His chiseled looks on the red carpet, or people using him as a shorthand for “handsome movie star,” may have suggested that DiCaprio only played idealistic, wish-fulfillment characters on-screen. Typically, though, he was inhabiting souls, sweating through their shirts, over the situations they were encased in. In other words, he channeled Griffin Dunne in After Hours more than a typical Taylor Lautner or Dwayne Johnson performance.

That extended to his work as Trooper William “Billy” Costigan Jr. in the Best Picture Oscar-winning film The Departed. Playing an undercover cop, Costigan prides himself on how “my hand does not shake … ever” when he’s around gangsters like Francis “Frank” Costello (Jack Nicholson). However, DiCaprio’s most famous lines in the film involve Costigan loudly reassuring Costello, “I’m not the f*cking rat!” Walking that tightrope of multiple identities leads Costigan Jr. to constant close calls that the discernibly vulnerable DiCaprio wrings for maximum suspense. All of that leads up to Costigan Jr. abruptly dying before the credits roll.

DiCaprio doesn’t play immovable Jesus stand-ins. He instead inhabits people whose lives can end if they walk around the wrong corner. 2008’s Revolutionary Road saw DiCaprio (reunited with Winslet) trapped in suburban Hell, where adhering to “standard” masculine norms only amplified domestic turmoil rather than bringing him peace. 2010’s Shutter Island , meanwhile, saw him portraying Edward “Teddy” Daniels, a man whose mind is untrustworthy as he navigates an island asylum. Both films start with DiCaprio inhabiting rigid, “reliable” masculine archetypes (the “father knows best” dad and a seasoned detective) before emphasizing how little they really know about the wider world.

DiCaprio’s Vulnerability Has Only Gotten More Interesting as He’s Grown Older
By the time DiCaprio was 30, he was already portraying the reclusive and urine-jar-obsessed Howard Hughes up to the age of 42 in The Aviator. It was a signal that this man wouldn’t shy away from increasing his vulnerability as he got older. While he embodied a suave espionage lead in Inception, 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street got great mileage out of DiCaprio’s playing mere mortal men. Who could ever forget the Wall Street sequence where Jordan Belfort writhes on the floor after taking expired quaaludes?

This sequence is a masterclass in physical comedy as DiCaprio’s Belfort plots how to get downstairs or into his car. The scene’s intentionally excruciatingly slow pacing especially lets DiCaprio make a meal out of Belfort’s every restrained move. This particular scene also epitomizes how well DiCaprio’s commitment to unabashedly messy and susceptible performances works for the directors he’s working with.

Martin Scorsese has made a career out of making movies about the grounded humans behind myths. When it comes to his films about corrupt gangsters/rich people, he emphasizes the innate emptiness in a life of capitalistic excess and violence. Wide shots of a drug-addled Belfort stuck at the top of a small collection of front porch stairs accentuate the patheticness of a man used to snapping his fingers and getting whatever he wants — DiCaprio’s willingness to be so helpless hammers home not just dark laughs.

It also challenges the conventional American view of billionaires as “superior people.” No amount of cash erases the fact that Jordan Belfort is a loser, subdued by expired Quaaludes. A similar phenomenon underpins his Ernest Burkhart performance in Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. DiCaprio portrays this guy as an impulsive and incompetent man with no moral compass. He just does whatever his evil uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro), says. With this exceedingly unglamorous performance, centuries of racist mythology about the “glories” of American settlers and colonizers are annihilated. These weren’t “brave” men and women. They were murderers, abusive partners, and monsters. With his ramshackle hair, constantly confused expression, and pouty demeanor, DiCaprio’s Burkhart lays that reality bare. In this vulnerable performance, one witnesses the horrifying truth of America’s past.

DiCaprio’s commitment to such deeply flawed characters has defined his acting over the last decade. That includes his Oscar-winning The Revenant performance. That whole exercise hinged on DiCaprio portraying a man left for dead struggling to survive on a minute-to-minute basis in the wilderness. Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood, meanwhile, had DiCaprio humorously portraying deeply insecure movie star Rick Dalton. Then there’s his excellent turn in this week’s new release, One Battle After Another , as persistently stoned former revolutionary Bob Ferguson. DiCaprio’s hysterically out-of-his-depth turn often evokes Jacques Tati (in physical acting) and Tim Robinson (in uproarious portrayals of frantic desperation).

Nobody watching Titanic in 1997 could’ve imagined that DiCaprio would, 28 years later, headline big-budget movies playing a bathrobe-clad schlub scrambling for a phone charger. That’s very much a compliment. Other ’90s movie stars like Kevin Costner, Will Smith, and Tom Cruise are still trying to just recreate the success of big 1996 hits. DiCaprio, meanwhile, has spent 20+ years eschewing the standard immovable machismo of classic American male movie stars. Thus, he’s evolved greatly artistically while consistently surprising audiences.

Turns out DiCaprio’s answer “to [reclaiming] his mantle as a young genius” was not being afraid of deeply mortal characters. Oh, and in the case of his outstanding One Battle After Another turn, hysterically executing weed-soaked paranoia.