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Leonardo DiCaprio
'I Didn't Want A Happy Ending'

by Robin Walker

The perennially cute Leonardo DiCaprio seems determined to inject some gravitas into his Hollywood stardom.

His last three films - The Aviator, The Departed and now Blood Diamond - have all been meaty affairs with serious ambitions.

The 32-year-old is very proud of the movies he is making now. And he could have been in the enviable position of competing against himself at the Academy Awards.

It has been a decade since he was propelled into major popular stardom with Titanic, but Leonardo maintains he doesn't consciously choose roles based on image.

"I never thought about that even through the entire course of my career, about choosing a specific role because it would make me seem more man-like.

"These things are intangible," he says about public perceptions. "It's
not something you can really control.

"You do these movies and you give them out to the world and you have no idea how people are going to react."

Instead, Leonardo is concentrating on roles that mean something to him, like his diamond smuggler character in Blood Diamond - a drama set amid the brutal chaos of 1990s Sierra Leone, which lays bare the exploitation of Africa by the diamond industry.

"It was such a powerful character and storyline and that's what you look for first," he says. "It brought the political aspect of the diamond
trade into this story in a way that I felt was authentic."

While the film takes a swipe at the way Western corporations have
exploited Africa's natural resources, Blood Diamond is also a good yarn.

"I wasn't personally seeking films with a social or political message to them - it has to be a good movie," Leonardo says. "It has to have an entertainment value. It has to convey a message without the audience feeling they are being preached to. I really felt this script accomplished that.

"I think this movie is that rare combination wherein you're able to get people to be involved with a compelling story and meanwhile they're getting this political message."

Not only did Leonardo go to great lengths to prepare for the role of an
ex-mercenary, but he encouraged director Ed Zwick to keep it real: "I
said, 'Look, I don't want this movie to have a sugar-coated happy
ending'. Ed was very secure in saying he was not going to make me
sympathetic."

The actor spent weeks doing military training and learning the local
accent. This meant plenty of hanging out with military types from
southern Africa - "drinking beers with them, hearing their stories," he explains.

"There's a certain amount you can get from books but you need to talk to the real people and ask them specific questions that affect your character."

This dedication to getting it right is partly why he's slowed down a
little, only doing about one movie a year since 2002's Gangs Of New
York.

He likes to work hard at getting under the skin of a character and this takes preparation. "That's what I try to concentrate and focus on," Leonardo says. "Because if you don't buy that, you don't buy the rest of the movie."

Not surprisingly, the diamond industry is not happy with how their
business is depicted in the film. Leonardo, however, says he didn't
really anticipate this.

"We're depicting a specific time in recent history where diamonds result in a lot of civil unrest," he explains.

"These are things based on real events. Until I got there and started
the research I didn't understand the immense impact that diamonds had on Sierra Leone and other places in Africa."

The film was shot in Mozambique - and the wealthy star says he was
sensitive to making a movie in such an impoverished society: "Certainly playing a character like this who was taking advantage of the poverty around him, it was uncomfortable as an actor to portray this man in front of an African crew."

It certainly put life's issues into perspective, particularly the petty
squabbles of Hollywood.

"When you're immersed in a place like that for six months and you see the extremes people have to deal with there... and yet they're able to keep a positive attitude. You just don't want to hear people's problems out here any more."

Coming after his acclaimed performance as an undercover cop in Martin Scorsese's brutal crime thriller The Departed, Leonardo is enjoying his new label as a drama king. He's keeping up the pace with his next projects.

The Chancellor Manuscript is a thriller set amid Washington politics and the drama Blink will be about first impressions.

Scorsese has also chosen him to play President Teddy Roosevelt in the
biopic The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt.

Leonardo has always considered himself a serious actor - he now admits the whole Leo-mania heartthrob period in the late 90s after Titanic was almost like an out-of-body experience.

"I have no connection with me during that whole Titanic phenomenon and what my face became around the world. I'll never reach that state of popularity again and it's not something I'm going to try to achieve either," he grins.

Edging further away from his pinup image, and showing his new political clout, Leonardo will also narrate the environmental documentary The 11th Hour.

"This is something I've been trying to do for many years," he says.
"I've been wanting to do a documentary that's really an environmental checklist and encompasses every major environmental issue."

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