Leonardo DiCaprio: Age, Biography, Career and Facts

Leonardo DiCaprio (born November 11, 1974) is an American actor and producer, the star of Titanic, the Best Actor Oscar winner for The Revenant, Martin Scorsese's most frequent leading man and a prominent environmental campaigner. This profile covers his biography, full movie list, Oscar history, relationships, memes and new films as of October 2026.

Age

Leonardo DiCaprio was born on November 11, 1974 and is 51 years old.

Who is Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles and has been acting professionally since childhood. He became a global star with Titanic (1997), spent the next two decades building one of the most respected filmographies in Hollywood, and finally won the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Revenant at the 2016 ceremony. His honors include an Oscar, three Golden Globes, a BAFTA, a Screen Actors Guild Award and the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival.

DiCaprio is known for choosing auteur-driven projects, often biographical or historical, and for his long partnership with Martin Scorsese, with whom he has made six feature films so far. Away from the screen he has campaigned on climate change and biodiversity since the late 1990s, founding the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 1998 and serving as a United Nations Messenger of Peace for climate change.

Leonardo DiCaprio in numbers

Indicator	Value
Birth date and place	November 11, 1974, Los Angeles, California, USA
Oscar	1 win (Best Actor, The Revenant, 2016 ceremony)
Oscar acting nominations	7 (as of October 2026), most recently for One Battle After Another
Golden Globes	3 (The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Revenant)
Films with Martin Scorsese	6 released, a seventh in production
Production company	Appian Way Productions
Foundation	Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (founded 1998), now part of Re:wild
Honor	Commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters (2005)

Young Leonardo DiCaprio: childhood in Los Angeles

DiCaprio is the only child of Irmelin Indenbirken, a legal secretary born in Germany, and George DiCaprio, an underground comic book artist and distributor of Italian and German descent. According to family lore, he was named Leonardo because his pregnant mother felt him kick while she was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

His parents separated when he was about a year old but raised him together, for a time living in neighboring houses in Los Angeles' Echo Park and Los Feliz areas. As a child he considered becoming a marine biologist. He attended the Center for Enriched Studies and John Marshall High School, left before graduating to pursue acting, and later earned a GED.

Early roles (1989–1995)

DiCaprio started with television commercials and educational films before small roles on series such as The New Lassie and Roseanne. In 1991 he joined the final season of the sitcom Growing Pains as the homeless teenager Luke Brower. His film debut came in the low-budget horror sequel Critters 3 (1991).

His real breakthrough was This Boy's Life (1993), in which he played the young writer Tobias Wolff opposite Robert De Niro. The same year he played Arnie Grape, a teenager with an intellectual disability, in Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape, earning his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actor. He followed with The Basketball Diaries (1995) and Total Eclipse (1995), in which he played the poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Titanic and global fame (1996–2001)

Baz Luhrmann's modern-dress Romeo + Juliet (1996), with Claire Danes, made him a teen idol and won him the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 1997 Berlin International Film Festival. Then came James Cameron's Titanic (1997), in which he played the penniless artist Jack Dawson opposite Kate Winslet. The film became the highest-grossing movie of all time up to then and won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, though DiCaprio himself was not nominated. The intense fan attention of the period was dubbed "Leomania."

He followed it with The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) and Danny Boyle's The Beach (2000), deliberately moving away from romantic-hero parts.

With Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan (2002–2013)

In 2002 DiCaprio starred as con artist Frank Abagnale Jr. in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can and as Amsterdam Vallon in Gangs of New York, his first film with Scorsese. Their partnership continued with The Aviator (2004), in which he played Howard Hughes and won his first Golden Globe; The Departed (2006), which won Best Picture; the psychological thriller Shutter Island (2010); and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), about stockbroker Jordan Belfort, which brought him another Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for both acting and producing.

In the same period he earned an Oscar nomination for Blood Diamond (2006), reunited with Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road (2008), and led Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), one of the biggest original blockbusters of its decade. He also played the plantation owner Calvin Candie in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012) and the title role in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013).

Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar

For years DiCaprio's lack of an Oscar was a running joke online. That ended with Alejandro G. Iñárritu's The Revenant (2015), in which he played frontiersman Hugh Glass, left for dead after a bear attack. The shoot in remote, freezing locations in Canada and Argentina was famously grueling; he ate raw bison liver for one scene and learned to fire a musket, build fires and speak Native American languages. The film grossed about $533 million worldwide, and DiCaprio swept the Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor. He used his Oscar speech, on February 28, 2016, to call for action on climate change.

Oscar history

Ceremony	Category	Film	Result
1994	Best Supporting Actor	What's Eating Gilbert Grape	Nominated
2005	Best Actor	The Aviator	Nominated
2007	Best Actor	Blood Diamond	Nominated
2014	Best Actor; Best Picture (producer)	The Wolf of Wall Street	Nominated
2016	Best Actor	The Revenant	Won
2020	Best Actor	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood	Nominated
2026	Best Actor	One Battle After Another	Nominated

Later work (2019–2026)

In 2019 he played fading Western star Rick Dalton opposite Brad Pitt in Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, earning another Best Actor nomination. He starred with Jennifer Lawrence in Adam McKay's climate satire Don't Look Up (2021), one of Netflix's most-watched films, and played Ernest Burkhart in Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), about the Osage murders of the 1920s.

In Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another (2025) he played Bob Ferguson, a burned-out former revolutionary forced back into action to protect his daughter. The film won six Oscars at the 98th Academy Awards in March 2026, including Best Picture, Best Director for Anderson and Best Supporting Actor for Sean Penn. DiCaprio received his sixth Best Actor nomination, his seventh acting nomination overall; the award went to Michael B. Jordan for Sinners.

Leonardo DiCaprio new movie: What Happens at Night

DiCaprio's next film is What Happens at Night, his seventh feature with Martin Scorsese, adapted from Peter Cameron's novel about an American couple who travel to a remote northern European town to adopt a child. Jennifer Lawrence co-stars, with Patricia Clarkson in the supporting cast. Apple Original Films is behind the project, which entered production in early 2026 and released a first-look image in March 2026. As of October 2026, no release date had been announced.

Leonardo DiCaprio movies: filmography

Year	Film	Role	Director
1993	This Boy's Life	Tobias Wolff	Michael Caton-Jones
1993	What's Eating Gilbert Grape	Arnie Grape	Lasse Hallström
1995	The Basketball Diaries	Jim Carroll	Scott Kalvert
1996	Romeo + Juliet	Romeo	Baz Luhrmann
1997	Titanic	Jack Dawson	James Cameron
1998	The Man in the Iron Mask	Louis XIV / Philippe	Randall Wallace
2000	The Beach	Richard	Danny Boyle
2002	Catch Me If You Can	Frank Abagnale Jr.	Steven Spielberg
2002	Gangs of New York	Amsterdam Vallon	Martin Scorsese
2004	The Aviator	Howard Hughes	Martin Scorsese
2006	The Departed	Billy Costigan	Martin Scorsese
2006	Blood Diamond	Danny Archer	Edward Zwick
2008	Revolutionary Road	Frank Wheeler	Sam Mendes
2010	Shutter Island	Teddy Daniels	Martin Scorsese
2010	Inception	Dom Cobb	Christopher Nolan
2012	Django Unchained	Calvin Candie	Quentin Tarantino
2013	The Great Gatsby	Jay Gatsby	Baz Luhrmann
2013	The Wolf of Wall Street	Jordan Belfort	Martin Scorsese
2015	The Revenant	Hugh Glass	Alejandro G. Iñárritu
2019	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood	Rick Dalton	Quentin Tarantino
2021	Don't Look Up	Dr. Randall Mindy	Adam McKay
2023	Killers of the Flower Moon	Ernest Burkhart	Martin Scorsese
2025	One Battle After Another	Bob Ferguson	Paul Thomas Anderson
TBA	What Happens at Night	Lead role	Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio memes

Few actors have produced as many internet memes. The most famous is the champagne toast from The Great Gatsby, widely used to congratulate or celebrate. A frame from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in which Rick Dalton points at a television screen, became the standard reaction for recognizing something familiar. The laughing Calvin Candie from Django Unchained, the "Leo Oscar" jokes of the years before The Revenant, and Jordan Belfort's chest-thumping scene from The Wolf of Wall Street also circulate constantly.

Environmentalism

DiCaprio established the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 1998 to fund environmental projects. In 2021 the foundation joined with other conservation groups to form Re:wild, where he is a founding board member. Through Appian Way Productions he has produced documentaries including The 11th Hour (2007), Virunga (2014), about the protection of mountain gorillas in Congo, Before the Flood (2016) and Ice on Fire (2019). In 2014 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon designated him a UN Messenger of Peace with a focus on climate change, and on September 23, 2014, he addressed the opening of the UN Climate Summit in New York.

Leonardo DiCaprio wife and girlfriends

DiCaprio has never been married and has no children. He is famously private and rarely discusses his relationships in interviews. His past long-term partners include supermodel Gisele Bündchen in the early 2000s, Israeli model Bar Refaeli and actress Camila Morrone. Since 2023 he has been in a relationship with Italian model Vittoria Ceretti; the couple made a rare joint public appearance at the 2026 Oscars, according to People magazine.

He owns homes in Los Angeles and New York and co-owns the island of Blackadore Caye off the coast of Belize, where he has long planned an eco-resort.

Quick facts

Full name	Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio
Born	November 11, 1974
Birthplace	Los Angeles, USA
Profession	Actor, film producer
Oscar	Best Actor for The Revenant (2016 ceremony)
Most famous films	Titanic, Inception, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Revenant
Most frequent director	Martin Scorsese
Companies	Appian Way Productions; Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation / Re:wild
Marital status	Never married; partner Vittoria Ceretti
Public role	UN Messenger of Peace for climate change

Timeline

• November 11, 1974: Born in Los Angeles
• 1991: Joined the final season of Growing Pains
• 1993: First Oscar nomination for What's Eating Gilbert Grape
• 1997: Silver Bear in Berlin for Romeo + Juliet; Titanic released in December
• 1998: Founded the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation
• 2002: First film with Martin Scorsese, Gangs of New York
• 2005: First Golden Globe, for The Aviator
• 2010: Inception and Shutter Island released
• 2013: The Great Gatsby and The Wolf of Wall Street released
• September 23, 2014: Spoke at the UN Climate Summit
• February 28, 2016: Won the Oscar for The Revenant
• 2019: Starred in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• 2023: Starred in Killers of the Flower Moon
• 2025: Starred in One Battle After Another
• March 2026: Seventh Oscar acting nomination; What Happens at Night in production

Photo: Raph_PH, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons