» beyond his oscar win
The interesting thing is , Leo probably knew about the Chinook but didn ’ t appreciate how quickly it could change the weather . �r , maybe he knew perfectly well and simply couldn ’ t resist the opportunity to break out such a clear and powerful anecdote on the biggest stage in the world . The latter makes perfect sense when you consider that climate change occupies most of his waking thought .
��t ' s this slow burn , � he said in a recent profile for Rolling Stone . “… It ’ s this inevitable thing , and it ' s so terrifying .” So maybe it ’ s not all that farfetched to say his acceptance speech was , in some sense , another performance – one of the most important and personal in his entire career .
HOLLYWOOD is overrun with causes . Leo is not alone in having made incredible contributions to his causes , but there ’ s also something different about him .
�ase in point� �n ���� , he was on a flight to Russia to meet president Vladimir Putin and donate $ 1,000,000 of his own money during a summit for the Siberian tiger . Out over the ocean , midway through the flight � a commercial flight , by the way � one of the plane ’ s engines exploded and the pilots had to dump the excess fuel to make an emergency landing . They came down hard . The tires blew on the runway and ambulances were on standby to tend to the distressed .
It ’ s worth noting here that Leo has survived some terrifying situations in the past . When he was skydiving in his 20s , both his main and backup chutes failed and he and his instructor survived only after they managed to untangle the backup . More recently he was cage diving with great white sharks off the coast of South Africa when one leapt into cage through the open top , snapping its jaws only a few feet away from him . On an earlier occasion , he was diving the reefs off the Galapagos �slands when his breather failed . Fellow diver and actor Ed Norton saved him only minutes before he drowned . Still , having lived through all this , Leo said watching that engine explode out of the window of that plane was the scariest moment of his life .
In other words , he had a very good excuse to cancel the trip ; maybe wire his donation from the relative safety of whichever one of his homes didn ’ t require him getting on another plane . �ut he didn ’ t . �e got on a private flight straight to St . Petersburg ; only he didn ’ t make it there the second time , either . They hit bad weather and had to make another emergency landing in Helsinki .
While Leo ’ s nerves must have been thoroughly rattled at this point , he tried again and made it there safely on his third attempt . Putin even stopped midway through his speech about the tigers to tell the folks at the summit about Leo ’ s incredible journey , ending by calling him a " nastoyashi muzhik " – a real man .
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Its this slow burn- LEONARDO DICAPRIO
When Tom Junod profiled Leo for Esquire in 2014 he described the decision to get on the second plane thusly : “ It ’ s not like he wants to , because when you fall like that , you realize something about the air . It ’ s not solid , and it can drown you . But he has – and this is what people don ’ t realize – responsibilities .” Hollywood stars have responsibilities , sure , but those aren ’ t the kind Junod is talking about . These are more like the kind that drag frazzled parents to little league practice or ballet . The kind that get them up every morning to pack lunches and get the kids ready for school . If not showing up isn ’ t really an option , those are responsibilities .
True , the head of a world superpower doesn ’ t acknowledge parents just for doing their parental duties , but I can ’ t help but think a similar kind of devotion animates Leo . That seemed even clearer when he was asked , for the Rolling Stone profile , whether he would like to have children one day . “ Do you mean do I want to bring children into a world like this ?” he responded .
LEO ’ S WORK as an activist exists at the intersection of his public and private lives ; two things he has spent his entire career trying to separate . He seems to have succeeded . Long gone are the days of Leo-mania , the post-Titanic craze during which time he prowled the streets of New York with a group of semifamous pals notoriously known as “ the pussy posse .” Today , aside from the occasional shot of him sunbathing on some super-sized yacht , you don ’ t see much about him . Even the endless parade of supermodels that is his love life rarely gets much coverage .
During one of the press junkets for the Revenant , an interviewer asked him about this curious phenomenon . “ You ’ re really good at disappearing in between projects , � she began . ��hen did you first learn how to take on this mega-fame ? Do you still struggle with it at all�� �e said it came from an early age . Growing up watching other actors , he never had the desire to know what their real lives were like . “ I want to see them do what they do ,” he said . It made the characters “ that much more believable .”
“ It ’ s a really obvious thing to say , but the more people know too much about who you really are , the more the mystery is taken away from the artist , and the harder it is for people to believe that person in a particular role ,” he said in another interview . It ’ s the same reason why , for many people , �en ��eck will always be the guy who felt up J-Lo in a music video .
�nlike ��eck , �eo doesn ’ t really have any of those persona-defining moments . In fact , he ’ s so polished that a short clip of him looking surprised when �ady Gaga accidentally brushed his arm on her way to the stage at the Golden Globes became tabloid fodder . �t ’ s as if the world needed a little reminder that he could feel non-choreographed emotions .
16 • fredi spring 2016 COVERSTORY //