Leonardo DiCaprio has made several of the most iconic movies in modern Hollywood. The actor’s numerous Oscar nominations show just how great a performer he is. Millions of people have seen him in dozens of films, but one person who hasn’t seen many Leonardo DiCaprio movies is Leonardo DiCaprio.
In an interview with Paul Thomas Anderson, his director in the upcoming One Battle After Another, for Esquire, Leonardo DiCaprio says that unlike his character Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood, he rarely watches his own movies. His one exception to that rule is his film The Aviator, one of his projects with Martin Scorsese. DiCaprio said:
I rarely watch any of my films, but if I’m being honest, there’s one that I have watched more than others. It’s The Aviator. That’s simply because it was such a special moment to me. I had worked with Marty [Scorsese] on Gangs of New York, and I’d been toting around a book on Howard Hughes for ten years. I almost did it with Michael Mann, but there was a conflict and I ended up bringing it to Marty.
It’s far from uncommon for actors to not watch their own movies. While many will see their own work at the movie's premiere, many actors avoid their own movies after that. There are a variety of reasons given. In some cases, the performer just feels weird watching themself. In other cases actors end up critiquing their own performance pretty harshly so they avoid watching it in order to avoid seeing everything they think they did wrong.
It's arguably an interesting-bordering-on-unexpected choice for a movie that DiCaprio rewatches himself in. As good as The Aviator is, it's probably not the movie most DiCaprio fans rewatch to see the actor in his element. That film feels like it gets overlooked within his filmography alongside others like The Wolf of Wall Street or ONce Upon A Time...In Hollywood.
The Aviator would certainly be a big movie for Leonardo DiCaprio. It marked his second Oscar nomination, but his first for Best Actor, an award he’s been nominated for four additional times since.
However, DiCaprio doesn’t watch the movie in order to review his own performance. The actor says the thing that makes The Aviator special is that it was a landmark movie in his career, one where he felt more than just a hired player. DiCaprio continued…
I was thirty. It was the first time as an actor I got to feel implicitly part of the production, rather than just an actor hired to play a role. I felt responsible in a whole new way. I’ve always felt proud and connected to that film as such a key part of my growing up in this industry and taking on a role of a real collaborator for the first time.
The Aviator was also the first of DiCaprio’s own movies where he served as a producer, giving him more of a say in the how the finished product turned out. At all of 30 years old, he was the embodiment of accomplishment to be in that position, and with a project that he clearly felt very strongly about. One imagines rewatching the film brings back a lot of those memories, and considering how well regarded The Aviator was, they're likely all good memories.
