Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest character sounds less like an indestructible new action movie badass and more like a bathrobe-adjacent bumbler. On the red carpet, the Oscar winner explained that his performance in the upcoming 2025 movie release leans on a very specific pop-culture north star: Jeff Bridges’ “The Dude” from one of the best movies of the ‘90s, The Big Lebowski. Instead of a bulletproof bruiser, the Titanic star and director Paul Thomas Anderson aimed for a guy who’s perpetually off balance—physically and emotionally—and that choice instantly makes One Battle After Another feel different from the typical fall action showcase.
The comments come via a video posted to Variety’s X account, which caught DiCaprio discussing how Anderson pushed him toward a looser, failure-forward energy for the film’s set pieces. In the clip, you can see him grin as he connects the dots between PTA’s sensibility and the Coen Brothers’ all-time slacker, which is still resonating after more than 25 years. Then he spells it out:
Well, you know, my character’s also a dude that sits home and smokes pot all the time, you know what I mean? So it was great to have that ease of incorporating that into the character and not having to jump and land the stunt. It’s a series of failures. I took a lot of inspiration from the Dude.
That “series of failures” line is intriguing, for sure. Anderson has long loved watching glossy movie stars move like real people. So rather than stage invincible showdowns, One Battle After Another appears to build tension around near-misses and wipeouts. It’s comedy and character baked into the action, which tracks with PTA’s filmmaking sweet spots. DiCaprio also owned up to just how physical that approach became:
Oh hell yeah [I was sore]. We did a lot of crazy stuff in this movie. But, you know, that’s the difference of what Paul does that’s different from everything else. He wants to see the Dude fall… I fell. [Laughs]
This is a cool shift for the Wolf of Wall Street performer. Over the last ten years or so, he’s mostly gone for those big, dramatic roles. But some of his best films let him play smaller, more relatable characters. With Anderson’s unique style and sense of humor, I think audiences can expect something really different.
One Battle After Another is set to tell the story of Bob (DiCaprio), a washed-up revolutionary marooned in stoned paranoia, who lives off-grid with his fiercely self-reliant daughter, Willa. When his old nemesis resurfaces and Willa disappears, Bob lurches back into the world he tried to escape, stumbling through a desperate search that forces both father and daughter to face the wreckage of their past choices. It's a loose book-to-screen adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, and is the second Pynchon novel PTA has adapted after Inherent Vice (2014).
Invoking The Big Lebowski is a clever choice. The film’s scenes focus less on perfect choreography and more on tone—specifically, how a character's perspective interacts with the world around them. If Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest movie takes a similar approach, we can expect moments filled with chaotic cause-and-effect. This makes perfect sense, as Anderson’s best movies often revolve around this concept.
Audiences can catch Leonardo DiCaprio calling on “The Dude’s” essence when One Battle After Another lands in theaters on September 26th.
