Leonardo DiCaprio Character Quotations

I couldn't deal with playing a character who rides motorcycles and has a leather jacket and is a tough kid, y'know?

I really don't know what I'm doing... I don't. It's terrible. I go in there and I learn how to be like the character and do the best I can, and that's all I really do.

The best thing about acting is that I get to lose myself in another character and actually get paid for it... It's a great outlet. I'm not really sure who I am - it seems I change every day.

Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act.

Don't think for a moment that I'm really like any of the characters I've played. I'm not. That's why it's called 'acting'.

I like to be able to play a character and act out a lot of things which I can't or don't do in my normal everyday life.

It was the simple fact that there was probably not a cooler character on earth that I could play...

Anyone I'm with has to give me freedom. I like to be with someone who has character and style and someone who is very understanding.

As an actor, you're constantly searching for that great character. Also, being a history buff and learning about people in our past and amazing things that they've done, I came across a book about Howard Hughes and he was set up as basically, the most multi-dimensional character I could ever come across. Often, people have tried to define him in biographies, but no one seems to be able to categorize him.

Yes, I can play younger than my age. But I can play characters older than I am, too. I'm not an actor who can just play the kid.

The truth of the matter is this - I never look for films specifically, because ultimately if the fundamentals of the character and the script and the director aren't there, it makes it a moot point.

When I can't immediately define the character, and there's an element of mystery to it and still a lot to be explored, that's when I say yes.

I'm open to doing any kind of role and any kind of genre as long as it's interesting and as long as I feel it could be a great character to play. I never take into my own personal opinions or my own public image into account when I chose movie roles.

I've gotten to play some pretty intense characters and I tend to think it's therapeutic for me.

There's a difference in our ages [with Leonardo DiCaprio], but we were both in the same sort of position [on The Quick and the Death movie].Everyone below us in a casting position were all these really famous character actors like Keith David. And they were looking at the two of us going, 'Who are these guys?' So that naturally kind of put us together in a way where we'd just hang out together because we didn't care about status. We just wanted to enjoy the experience. The two things that have changed about Leo [ DiCaprio] since that time: he can drink legally and he's no longer a virgin.

We actually did a lot of takes on this movie [J. Edgar Hoover ]. I never left the set wanting more. That's for sure. I don't know. This was a very difficult character for me and a lot of the other actors here, and at times we went and did 8 or 9 or 10 takes on a single day.

I think everyone has some sort of connection to Gatsby as a character... he's created himself according to his own emotions and dreams and lifted himself by his bootstraps from a poor kid in the Midwest and created this image that is The Great Gatsby and it's a truly American story in that regard.

To put a lot of hard work and effort into a project or character and for it to be recognised, how can it not be nice?

These types of films that are psychologically sort of dark at times, I find extremely exciting to do because there's always something to think about. There's nothing more boring than to show up on set and say a line and know that your character means exactly what they say. It's interesting to have an unreliable narrator in a film and that's what both of those films have been.

Marty [Scorsese] knows that when an improvised moment comes out of a real situation, it's gonna have more life and more going on than anything you can imagine and that's how the character can become the story

[Success] always starts with the material; it always starts with the truth and honesty of the characters that you read in the screenplay and that's rarely something that can be remedied if it's simply not there by the time you shoot the film. Thank God we had that.

If you're gonna let the character be the story, you better set a tone that allows the actors to do the best work they can do.