Now that we’ve piqued your curiosity with this Birthday Wishes post, do we have your attention if we tell you it’s Leonardo DiCaprio’s 39th today? There is a more than likely chance that he is spending it on a yacht with a supermodel somewhere that none of us can afford to go right now. A former child star who started out as that kid on Growing Pains who wasn’t Kirk Cameron, DiCaprio has evolved into one of the most prestigious and talented actors working today. He earned that supermodel yacht.
While we’re definitely looking forward to his upcoming role as the scheming and opportunistic Jordan Belfort in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, and an in-development Woodrow Wilson biopic somewhere down the line, DiCaprio already has a massive, storied body of work to celebrate. As a youngster, he had star-making turns in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Romeo + Juliet and a tiny indie that nobody has ever heard of or seen called Titanic.
As his acting matured, and so did his baby face, DiCaprio has taken on a mixture of playing real-life subjects — like conman Frank Abagnale, Jr. in Catch Me if You Can, reclusive pilot Howard Hughes in The Aviator and FBI head J. Edgar Hoover in J. Edgar — and twisting fictional characters into men of his own design. As Cobb, the head thief in Inception, his personal and internal struggles were just as compelling as the larger plot of subconscious espionage. And could you really picture anyone else playing the demented, delighted Calvin Candie in Django Unchained to such utter perfection besides him?
Though The Great Gatsby wasn’t the…best film, one can certainly argue that casting DiCaprio as the legendary, lovestruck billionaire was a fitting choice.
The Wolf of Wall Street is in theaters December 25th.
