I have despised Leonardo DiCaprio almost my whole life, and I hated that we were birthday twins.
Maybe because by the time I was 14, the only movie I had watched was the Titanic, in the Spanish-spoken version, with my parents saying a hundred times how this movie was the last movie they had seen in the cinema before they got married. I made up my mind after watching The Basketball Diaries, one of his first movies, at school. That's when I realized how good he is at what he does. And, with a little help of quarantine, I had the chance to catch up with Leo and his work and, believe me, I haven't been more fascinated in my life.
Leonardo has participated in around 35 movies and, even though he has been nominated (and eventually, won) for multiple awards multiple times, he had only won one Oscar for his 2015 movie "The Revenant", which I haven't seen yet but, according to the public, there was no other way that DiCaprio wouldn't win Best Actor for his leading role. But, according to me, he should have won this award before, and the Academy robbed him. Therefore, here is a list of movies for which I believe Leo should have won Best Actor before.
P.S. these are ordered from "He should have won an Oscar but maybe he wasn't fully ready for it" to "Leo you are to good for this world they don't deserve you"
The Basketball Diaries
Jim Carroll is a teenager living in New York. He hopes to be a great basketball player and enter college through a sports scholarship, for this reason, he plays on his high school team with his friends. Jim and his friends begin to try drugs, but this one, after trying cocaine, finds himself fully in the world of drugs, just like his friends.
Leonardo was only 21 years old when he interpretated this controversial teenager, and I legit can't believe the vastity of his talent in order to do so. This movie is so raw, so personal and real. I remember how much the final scenes impressed me. Even though he was young here, and he was just starting to be famous, his work here is admirable.
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby has as its background the American high society, in which a mysterious and immensely rich man, Gatsby, unfolds, who, despite this, is considered an upstart and is only accepted as a guest. But Gatsby is determined to get the love he did not achieve in his youth.
What a movie. This is one of my favourite cinematographic pieces of work, one of my favourite books, and my favourite movie starring DiCaprio, where he plays a character with such inner development, full of love and sadness, who tries to hide this emptyness behind his wealth and big parties. And he is surrounded by well-constructed characters, making the movie an amazing thing to watch. He wasn't even nominated for this but, at least, the movie won Best Costume Design and Best Production Desing, and that would have been a whole robbery if they'd lost.
Shutter Island
The story tells the investigation of two federal agents sent to a mental institution called Shutter Island, in order to search for Rachel Solando, a psychotic patient who has mysteriously escaped from her cell.
In this masterpiece DiCaprio plays one of the two federal agents (the other one is Mark Ruffalo, also known as the man we all need in our lives). The chaos surrounding Leo's character is AMAZING. One of the best developed stories out there, even though you have to pay attention to every detail in the movie in order to understand what is going on. No spoilers but, there's a scene, almost at the end of the movie, involving DiCaprio's character and his family in which his performance is outstanding. He definitely should have won a Best Actor award for this one, or at least they should have created a term for Best Duo, and make Leonardo and Mark win this one, as I haven't seen a more fabulous thing than Ruffalo hanging DiCaprio a cigarette.
The Wolf of Wall Street
The film tells the story of a New York stockbroker, played by DiCaprio, who refuses to cooperate in a securities fraud case involving corruption on Wall Street, the commercial bank, and infiltration of the mob.
THE AUDACITY. To this day, and for the rest of my life, I won't be able to believe how they didn't make DiCaprio win for his work in this masterpiece. Jordan Belfort is one of my favourite DiCaprio's character, and this is the best DiCaprio role. Not only his character but the whole scenario is fierce and chaotic, which makes this movie perfect. There's this exact scene for which I believe Leonardo should have won every existing award: Belfort leaves a hotel lobby after consuming some intense drug which affects his whole capacity of moving and tries to reach his car and get away, by crawling all the way to his parking lot and opening the car door with his foot. This whole scene was improvised, and Leo hurt his back doing this work of art. It's a crime that he didn't win this one (Hopefully, I'm not that mad as the category in that year was won by Matthew McCounaghey for his role in "Dallas Buyers Club", in which he is perfect in his character).
So, even though Leo got what he deserved back in 2016, we cannot avoid the fact that he deserves even more recognision. I will keep on watching the movies I haven't seen and he will keep on creating movie hits and keep fighting for an award. But, in the meantime, we can celebrate our birthday together.
