Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor best known for starring in a variety of films which involve death or near-death (Titanic, The Beach, The Departed) and is currently promoting the survival story: The Revenant, appears to have had a similar almost-fatal streak in his personal life.
The actor has revealed his numerous brushes with death, seemingly including a plane engine exploding, an angry great white shark and a failed parachute during a sky dive.
“My friends have named me the person they least want to do extreme adventures with, because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster. If a cat has nine lives, I think I’ve used a few”, the actor told Wired.
According to DiCaprio, one brush with death was on a commercial airline flight to Russia around 2009.
DiCaprio, who was sitting in Business Class, claims he saw “the entire wing explode in a fireball”, following this, he says, the engines were shut down for a few minutes and “you’re just sitting there gliding with absolutely no sound and nobody in the plane said anything”.
According to the actor the “surreal” experience ended with the pilots starting the engines up again and making an emergency landing in New York.
The second ill-fated moment occurred while the apparent thrill-seeker was in a shark cage to meet great whites in South Africa.
“A great white jumped into my cage when I was diving… Half of its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me.”
“[It] jumped up and grabbed the tuna, and half its body landed inside the cage with me. I sort of fell down to the bottom and tried to lie flat.
“The great white took about five or six snaps an arm’s length away from my head. The guys there said that has never happened in the 30 years they’d been doing it.”
DiCaprio, who says he has the moment on video, says the shark flipped itself out of the cage and swam on.
The actor’s ‘third life’ being taken was on a skydive where a first parachute became knotted so the expert had to cut it free. The second chute was apparently knotted too but after consistently shaking it in midair became unraveled.
“I didn’t think about the extra chute, so I thought we were just plummeting to our death,” the actor says before revealing that despite warnings of broken legs the pair escaped “bruised up” but not seriously harmed.
DiCaprio made it clear he no longer skydives.
