Leonardo DiCaprio - The Biography. Douglas Wight
After Leonardo had finished filming This Boy’s Life but before any buzz about his performance started to circulate, he found himself auditioning for another potentially challenging role.
Like the Caton-Jones project he’d just completed, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape already had a star name on board. Johnny Depp had been signed up to play the lead character before a screenplay was even written. Depp, who had recently made Hollywood sit up and take notice of his acting talents with a haunting turn as Edward Scissorhands, was taken by the idea that Peter Hedges’ 1991 novel was like a modern-day Catcher in the Rye.
As with This Boy’s Life, Leonardo faced stiff competition and a real test of his acting skills as he read for the part of Gilbert Grape’s mentally retarded brother Arnie. Initially, Swedish director Lasse Hallström wanted an actor ‘who wasn’t good-looking’ for the part but after seeing Leonardo’s impressive audition, he was willing to change his mind.
Still, a large group of hopefuls remained in the running and Hallström tried to whittle them down by setting a challenge. Each actor was given the same tape of a retarded boy and asked to mimic his movements.
‘I watched the kid move his eyes and body, and just tried to get into his mind,’ Leonardo recalls. ‘It was interesting because he was completely unpredictable, so I could improvise pretty much whenever I felt it was right during the scene. I took a lot of his mannerisms and made them more like my own.’
His interpretation did the trick. Hallström was impressed by what he saw. ‘Of all the actors who auditioned for the role of Arnie,’ he said, ‘Leonardo was the most observant.’
As Hedges put the finishing touches to his screenplay, Leonardo was installed as Arnie and the rest of the impressive cast assembled. Juliette Lewis, who’d burst onto the scene opposite Robert De Niro in the remake of the thriller Cape Fear and who that year had replaced British star Emily Lloyd in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives (1992), was to play Gilbert’s love interest, Becky, while Mary Steenburgen appeared as a housewife who lusted after Gilbert. But the most surprising addition to the cast was unknown Darlene Cates, who was to play the boys’ mother.
Gilbert Grape author and screenwriter Hedges saw Cates on US chat show The Sally Jessy Raphael Show discussing how she became housebound when her weight ballooned to over 550lb. He spoke to Cates and offered her the part, feeling that someone who lived that life for real was more convincing than an actress told to fatten up for the part. It was a brave move and one that added to the independent feel of the picture. Her performance was key to the story, a subtle, moving drama about a family burdened by her immobilised frame.
To prepare for the part of Arnie, Leonardo conducted further research and gave an early indication of the seriousness with which he would approach his roles: he went into homes, studied similarly impaired children and tried to get inside their minds. He was fascinated to discover that, far from being crazy, these kids were spontaneous and unpredictable.
‘I had to really research and get into the mind of somebody with a disability like that,’ he says. ‘So I spent a few days at a home for mentally retarded teens. We just talked and I watched their mannerisms. People have these expectations that mentally retarded children are really crazy, but it’s not so. It’s refreshing to see them because everything’s so new to them.’
The more Leonardo found out for himself about the role he was about to play, the greater freedom he was afforded by Hallström and he was left pretty much to his own devices. He compiled a list of ‘a couple of hundred little attributes’ but when he approached the director to go through the ones he wanted to try, the Swede essentially waved him off.
‘Lasse didn’t really tell me anything about actually what he thought I should do,’ explains Leo. ‘He just said, “Do what you think.” It was the most freedom I had ever had with anything I’d ever done.’
Where Leo was concerned, director Hallström believed it was all in his eyes. ‘His two eyes are different,’ explains Hallström. ‘The left eye is very soft and empathetic; the right eye is more analysing. One eye oozes warmth, while the other is more penetrating. One eye is psyche, the other is intellect.’
Commenting on the character of Arnie, Leonardo said: ‘He’s a person who does specifically whatever he feels at a singular moment. He’ll go off and climb the water tower, or scream or burp, or whatever. He’s a real instinctual character. I had a great time playing him for that reason, because I was free to pretty much do whatever I wanted with him. It was really a lot of fun. I’ve never played a character in my life that had that much freedom.’
And he added: ‘Johnny and Juliette were really cool for letting me go off and do my thing with that. They were calming me down because I was very hyper.’
Indeed, the freedom afforded to all of the leading actors helped create a relaxed atmosphere on set and Johnny and Leonardo developed a big brother-little brother relationship. Depp playfully teased his young co-star by getting him to sniff smelly food such as pickled eggs so that he could laugh at Leo’s reaction. Eventually the demands to see Leo’s facial expressions grew so ridiculous, the teenager began charging Depp $500 a pop for the pleasure. In return, Leonardo used his more experienced buddy to supply him with cigarettes.
Johnny was impressed by DiCaprio’s assured performance and recognised a rising star in the making. ‘Good fun,’ he remarked, when asked what it was like working with the teenage Leo. ‘He was really a kid, you know, so he was like a pain in the ass. He was always, “Johnny, give me a cigarette. My mom’s not looking, give me a cigarette!” But he was a good kid.’
Both actors were unfaltering in their praise for Cates, who revelled in her role.
Leonardo said: ‘To come into a movie for the first time and do the job that she’s done and to feel so loving and so comfortable towards everybody on set, including me and Johnny [is something]. To me, playing Arnie, I went in and I was able to be this character, and at the end of the three months, I was done with. She has to live that life – she did a terrific job.’
Depp added: ‘Darlene is for me the shock of the film. She is one of the most incredible people I have ever known. To be so brave as to allow herself to unravel emotionally, she’s incredible – she should be applauded.’
When the movie was released in December 1993, it took over $2 million on the opening weekend and went on to make a respectable $10 million. What was undeniable, however, was the universal praise for Leo’s performance. The New York Times film critic Janet Maslin gushed, ‘the film’s real show-stopping turn comes from Mr. DiCaprio, who makes Arnie’s many tics so startling and vivid that at first he is difficult to watch. The performance has a sharp, desperate intensity from beginning to end,’ while Film Review praised ‘a performance of astonishing innocence and spontaneity’, bringing ‘a touching credibility to a very difficult part.’
On viewing the movie, many industry giants, including Martin Scorsese, found it hard to believe that Leo wasn’t really mentally challenged but his performance was far more than a really good imitation of a retarded boy. Any moviegoers witnessing Arnie’s heartbreaking realisation that his mother was not about to wake up from her nap would realise that here was an actor with extraordinary range and vulnerability – and a face every bit as handsome as Depp’s.
And his performance also amazed one of Leo’s kinder critics. His grandmother Helene was overjoyed to see him pull off such a difficult role with style. ‘He was so convincing,’ she said, proudly. ‘Many people who saw it thought he was really handicapped because he acted so well. I’m astounded what he manages to do without any acting lessons, he really has talent.’
As the praise snowballed, the award nominations began to come Leonardo’s way. He won the National Board of Review Award and the New Generation Award again. Then the whispers started about an Oscar nomination. A Golden Globe nod for Best Supporting Actor was considered a pointer for a similar nomination in the Oscars. Leonardo tried to put the buzz to the back of his mind but when the nomination was eventually