Posted on Author Natalia AiroldiComments Off on Jamie Foxx Honored by Leonardo DiCaprio at American Black Film Festival Honors
The 4th Annual American Black Film Festival Honors were held on Feb. 23 in Beverly Hills where Jamie Foxx was the honoree of the evening. The Academy Award winner even received a special surprise – Leonardo DiCaprio showed up to present him with the award.
“There is one defining characteristic about this man. I was sitting back thinking about what I was going to say about Jamie tonight and it’s a characteristic I was able to experience firsthand on the set of Django Unchained. Jamie brings out the very best in other people. He lifts up everyone around. You can see any social setting he’s in. He’s like a magnetic force in any room that he inhabits, and there is no one in this industry who pays positivity and encouragement forward the way Jamie Foxx does.”
After Leonardo DiCaprio introduced Jamie Foxx, who started tearing up during his pal’s speech, Foxx took the mic and said some equally nice words about Leo.
“I’m just going to be honest — we’ve partied in some situations where no cell phones were allowed and I watched him rap ‘Scenario,’ ” Foxx said of the A Tribe Called Quest hit. The Ray star then proceeded to launch into rapping the beginning of the song as he encouraged DiCaprio to sing along.
Posted on Author Natalia AiroldiComments Off on Leonardo DiCaprio attends the 92nd Annual Academy Awards
Leonardo DiCaprio, nominated at this year’s Oscars for his role as Rick Dalton in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, attended the 92nd Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on February 09, 2020 in Hollywood, California.
Leonardo didn’t win the Oscar but his co-star Brad Pitt accepted the 2020 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Hearing his name read aloud, Pitt got up from his seat and immediately hugged Leo and made the most heartfelt tribute to him during his Oscars speech: “Leo, I’ll ride on your coattails any day, man – the view is fantastic.”
Posted on Author Natalia AiroldiComments Off on Leonardo DiCaprio at the MPTF 18th Annual ‘Night Before’ Party
In anticipation of Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, the Motion Picture & Television Fund threw their annual Night Before party in West Hollywood on Saturday evening.
Leonardo DiCaprio was among the A-listers at the party which raised more than $5.4 million in support of the MPTF.
Funds are used to support industry colleagues and friends who benefit from MPTF’s charitable programs and services, such as financial assistance, crisis counseling, care giving support and the retirement facility in Woodland Hills that is “home” to television and film veterans. In total, the annual event has raised more than $90 million since its inception in 2003.
Posted on Author Natalia AiroldiComments Off on Leonardo DiCaprio: “Kobe was truly larger than life, a legend”
Following NBA legend Kobe Bryant’s tragic death in helicopter crash on Sunday morning, actor and Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio took to Twitter to express his feelings regarding the passing of Bryant:
Kobe was truly larger than life, a legend. May he and all those who lost their lives today rest in peace. Love and condolences to his family. LA will never be the same.
Posted on Author Natalia AiroldiComments Off on Once upon a time, Tarantino slept in his car and DiCaprio was a break dancer (Los Angeles Times interview)
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
“I swear to God, I had to hide a tear,” Brad Pitt says, looking over at Quentin Tarantino and Leonardo DiCaprio, remembering the first time Tarantino played him the José Feliciano cover of “California Dreamin’” on the set of “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” “Look,” Pitt continues. “I’m not ashamed to say it. I got a little misty.”
We’ve settled onto a couple of sofas inside a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont because … where else would we meet to talk about Tarantino’s wistful elegy to a bygone Hollywood? As the song declares, it’s a winter’s day, though the (palm tree) leaves are green, not brown, and the sun setting just beyond the swimming pool is making the sky periwinkle blue, not a dismal gray.
But otherwise, yeah, we’re California dreamin’, sitting back, talking about a movie that earned 10 Oscar nominations — three for Tarantino as a director, writer and producer, and acting nods for DiCaprio and Pitt — and also considering the good fortune that has graced their lives over the last few decades.
“You know, when I first moved out here, it was the summer of ’86 and I didn’t know [expletive]-all about Los Angeles, other than what I’d seen on ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ and ‘Dragnet,’” Pitt says. “I landed in Burbank at a house I could crash at for a month or so. It was just me and a maid from Thailand who couldn’t speak English. Man, I was just so up for the adventure, and so excited when I’d drive by a studio where they make movies. It meant the world to me.”
“Then I moved and it was one of those eight guys in a two-bedroom apartment in North Hollywood kind of things,” Pitt continues, smiling at the memory. “You have your little corner where you keep your clothes folded up in a little bedroll. I became quite accustomed to McDonald’s and Shakey’s Pizza buffet. I didn’t mind. The city was a wide-open experience.”
Pitt presses Tarantino to tell tales of living in his car, writing scripts. “Which part of town?” he asks. Tarantino evades the queries for a bit, then relents. “It was at the back of Video Archives,” Tarantino says, talking about the Manhattan Beach video store where he worked in the ‘80s, turning customers on to kung fu and blaxploitation movies while writing “Reservoir Dogs.” And, yes, he slept in his car, a Ford Capri, around back in the parking lot.
“You’re not stretching out in a Ford Capri, are you?” Pitt asks, laughing.
DiCaprio’s parents moved to L.A. at the behest of his mom, who spied a Venice Beach postcard while living in the Bronx and thought, “This is where I want to move.” They settled east of Hollywood. Tarantino can picture the precise location because the apartment was right by the pool hall where Martin Scorsese shot the interiors for his 1973 drama “Mean Streets.”
“Hollywood and Western,” DiCaprio says, pinpointing the cross streets. “Then we moved to Silver Lake and it was me bugging my parents on the commute to go to school on the Westside to please, please, please drop me off at auditions. But I kept getting rejected by agents. I think because I was a break dancer at the time and had crazy haircuts …”
Pitt interrupts with a burst of laughter. “You were a break dancer? There’s got to be video somewhere.” DiCaprio cops to owning a little footage. “Oh, my God,” Pitt says. “VHS of course. I’ve got to see it. We need a movie night.”
“But that rejection,” DiCaprio continues, “it was like, even though I lived in the mecca of this dream land that was the movie industry, it felt like this intangible world where I needed a fairy godmother to come down and say, ‘You are anointed as an actor.’”
The conversation circles back around to “California Dreamin’,” Feliciano’s haunting cover of the Mamas and the Papas song heard in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” as Rick and Cliff drive home after a rather eventful day. Rick has gone through hell and back, shooting a guest spot on a TV pilot called “Lancer,” first trashing his trailer in a rage fueled by self-pity, doubt and a haze of whiskey sours and then recovering to later nail his big scene. Cliff has picked up a hippie hitchhiker, dropped her off at Spahn Ranch and then engaged in a showdown with Manson family members on the western town movie set.
“They both had these pretty insane days, and then we get in the car and I remember asking Quentin, ‘Should we talk about this?’” DiCaprio says. “And Quentin was like, ‘Just get in the car and drive.’ And it’s like this palate cleanser. And it’s also sincerely who these two guys were. We’re going home, get a pizza, drink some beer and watch me on ‘The FBI.’ That’s our therapy. And I have that relationship with some of my friends. ‘Let’s just sit and say nothing.’”
Pitt nods. “And then maybe three days later, Cliff would tell him what happened. Or he probably didn’t tell Rick because he’d get pissed off that he’d have to spend the 18 bucks to fix the flat tire. ‘What the [expletive] were you driving to Chatsworth for? Why is the mileage in my car so off?’”
Of all the lines in all the reviews written about “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” the one that Tarantino cherishes relates to the film’s verisimilitude in re-creating a Los Angeles with half a century in its rear-view mirror.
“It was, ‘When Cliff drives through L.A. it was like Brad Pitt driving through a documentary,’” Tarantino remembers, laughing. “And, frankly, if you do a movie like this, that’s the thing you want to nail and really be proud of that. It’s like [Werner] Herzog. ‘Yeah, we really nailed the Amazon in ‘Fitzcarraldo.’ Well, we nailed Los Angeles.”
DiCaprio loves this comparison so deeply that he will repeat “we really nailed the Amazon” half a dozen times before we leave. It also triggers an idea, a sort of side hustle that he seems willing to bankroll.
“Do a ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ tour and take on the TMZ buses that show up at our houses,” DiCaprio says. “We could make a lot of moolah and put them out of business.” Tarantino starts ticking off the possible locales — Westwood Village, Musso & Frank Grill, the landmark Mexican restaurants El Coyote and Casa Vega — noting that he recently went on a Vienna walking tour of spots used in Carol Reed’s 1946 film noir “The Third Man” and loved it. “Except for the rats in the sewers,” he adds. “They freaked me out.”
“But it needs to be done sooner than later,” DiCaprio adds. “There’s such a disposability to this town. We create this permanence in these movies and they get burned into celluloid and that’s what we live with. Everything else just evaporates and disappears. Los Angeles is constantly evolving and changing. That’s why movies like this are so engaging.”
Posted on Author Natalia AiroldiComments Off on A “Starstruck” Leonardo DiCaprio Calls the Late Luke Perry –a “Modern Day James Dean”
Screen Actors Guild Award nominee Leonardo DiCaprio stopped by the Variety platform to talk about his own early days as an actor. Including a time where he channeled fellow nominee Joaquin Phoenix during one of his earlier auditions.
The “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” star also shared his experiences working with the late actor Luke Perry on the Quentin Tarantino set. Revealing that he was “starstruck” around Perry, DiCaprio called him the “modern day James Dean.”
