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 Greed, corruption and madness: DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator.Howard Hughes was a larger-than-life filmmaker, tycoon, aviator - and obsessive compulsive. Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays him in the Oscar-tipped The Aviator, tells John Hiscock how his own milder form of the disorder gave him an insight into the role.
For Leonardo DiCaprio, it was one of those moments when he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. There he was, in a South American rainforest, studying the effects of mercury poisoning in the Amazon, when he was confronted by a group of naked Indians.
"They began pointing at me and saying 'Leonardo DiCaprio from Titanic,' " he recalls with a helpless shrug. "It was amazing. That film has broken so many cultural boundaries."
Although he has just turned 30, the boyishly handsome actor is resigned to the fact that he will always be linked to Titanic, the 1997 Oscar-winning film in which he and Kate Winslet played tragic lovers on the doomed ship.
"That film is a phenomenon," he says. "It was immense and it's made so much money, but the fact that it's reached many different cultures is astounding to me. I know that no matter what else I do, it's going to be with me and be a part of me for the rest of my life. I don't have any regrets about it because it has given me great opportunities as an actor – and it's a pretty good film, too."
It was his role in Titanic that confirmed his status as Hollywood's leading heartthrob and ushered in the surreal Beatle-like fan worship that became known as Leo-mania. On the day we talked, word had leaked out of his whereabouts and photographers lurked outside the front door of the Los Angeles hotel where we met.
For DiCaprio, a thoughtful, introspective man, being the focus of attention whenever he ventures out is particularly irksome, although he accepts that there is little he can do about it.
"The paparazzi are horrible people for most of us and I wish they wouldn't follow me around and make my life miserable, but when I start talking about how we should fight them and how they are destroying everything, I feel such a shallow jerk because there are so many more important things in the world that people should be focusing on, not whether some rich celebrity is being photographed by paparazzi," he says.
The attention and fan fever are likely to heighten with the release of The Aviator, Martin Scorsese's epic film about Howard Hughes. DiCaprio is being widely tipped for an Oscar nomination for his performance as Hughes, the eccentric tycoon who became a millionaire oilman, a successful filmmaker, a record-setting pilot, an aircraft designer and the founder of an international airline, before ending his life as an insane recluse, terrified of germs and the outside world.
Hughes is a man who has fascinated DiCaprio since he read a biography of him eight years ago and mentioned it to the writer-director Michael Mann. Mann brought scriptwriter John Logan to the project and after much discussion they decided to concentrate on Hughes's life between 1927 and 1948, when he was a pioneering filmmaker and aviator.
Warren Beatty and others have toyed for years with the idea of a film about Hughes, but none came off the drawing board. "I think the reason no film has been done is because everyone has tried to focus on the older Howard Hughes, but it's not very cinematic because no matter how interesting he is, it's a man stuck in a hotel room for 15 years of his life with tissue boxes for shoes, talking on telephones," says DiCaprio.
Michael Mann was exhausted and needed a break from directing, having just finished filming Ali, so DiCaprio took the idea to Martin Scorsese, with whom he had worked on Gangs of New York. Because Scorsese has never liked flying, DiCaprio ripped off the title page before presenting him with the script. He need not have worried as Scorsese was riveted by Hughes's adventures and the story of greed, corruption and madness that surrounded them. Mann remained on board as a producer.
The Aviator begins shortly after Hughes's arrival in Hollywood to film Hell's Angels, which, at a cost of $4 million, was at the time by far the most expensive film ever made. It ends with Hughes's one and only flight at the controls of the Spruce Goose, the giant flying boat he designed and built. In between, among other things, the film covers his love affair with Katharine Hepburn, a stormy romance with Ava Gardner, his flight around the world in a record-breaking four days, his purchase of Trans-World Airlines, his feuds with Pan-Am, his victory over a corrupt US Senator and his fight with film censors for the right to show Jane Russell's cleavage on screen.
His public exploits notwithstanding, Hughes was a man who valued his privacy.
"He was the last private man in America," says DiCaprio. "Despite his ambition, he had a strong need for solitude and I can definitely empathise with that."
It is apparent to everyone but DiCaprio that there are other common denominators linking him and Hughes, apart from their love of privacy. Both had a taste for beautiful women – Hughes had affairs with Jean Peters, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner and countless starlets while DiCaprio has romanced a slew of supermodels such as Kate Moss, Helena Christensen, Eva Herzigova and Amber Valetta, and he is currently involved with Gisele Bundchen. Both men's romantic dalliances were regular fodder for the gossip columns, although the similarity seems lost on DiCaprio, who marvels at the thought of Hughes in his Hollywood heyday.
"Imagine being a billionaire at that time and being that good-looking and being a movie producer and a shy and private guy and so charming," he says. "It must have been a killer for the ladies. A killer." He grins at the thought.
Another trait DiCaprio shares with Hughes is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hughes's compulsions eventually fuelled his descent into madness in later years while DiCaprio has a firm control of his mild symptoms, and used them to good effect while portraying Hughes.
Not yet a recognised condition when Hughes was a sufferer, it increasingly took over his life, causing him to repeat phrases over and over, continually wash his hands and break down at the sight of a spot on another man's suit. A scene in the film depicts him stark naked in his screening room, unable to face anybody and conducting a deranged experiment with bottles of his own urine.
"I think being obsessive-compulsive tied into his women, too," said DiCaprio. "He was never able to stay with one woman because he looked on them like aeroplanes: he literally wanted to get the faster, sleeker aeroplane with the bigger turbines."
DiCaprio's disorder is more likely to take the form of making him reluctant to step on cracks in the pavement or something similar, although he has little difficulty overcoming his urges. "I'm able to say at some point, 'OK, you're being ridiculous, stop stepping on every gum stain you see. You don't need to do that. You don't need to walk 20 feet back and put your foot on that thing. Nothing bad is going to happen.'
"I can talk myself through it, you know, whereas Howard Hughes couldn't do that and people with hard-core OCD can't.
"During filming I let it all go and I never listened to the other voice, so I remember my make-up artist and assistant walking me to the set and going, 'Oh, God, here he goes again. We're going to need 10 minutes to get him to the set today because he has to walk back and step on that thing and touch the door in a certain way and then walk in and walk out again.'
"I let myself do it because I wanted that to come out. I was trying to be the character. It became real bothersome, even after the filming."
DiCaprio, smartly dressed in a dark suit and blue opennecked shirt with a wispy goatee, talks with humour and knowledge about film and his career and becomes passionate when the topic turns to the environment and the damage being done by the current US administration.
DiCaprio was born and grew up in Hollywood, although his parents, to whom he is still very close, separated when he was one year old. Rejected by a casting agent when he was 11, he tried again at 14 and landed an agent, who got him a toy commercial. Supporting roles in television series followed, but his first film role in Critters 3 gave little hint of his potential. Robert De Niro, however, spotted it and chose him for This Boy's Life and he was on the way.
His next film, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and he used his new-found recognition to take on a variety of roles, as a young gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead, a heroin-addicted youth in The Basketball Diaries, Arthur Rimbaud in Total Eclipse and Romeo in Baz Luhrmann's version of Romeo + Juliet.
Then came Titanic and the media deluge. But in the seven years since then he has made only four films, none of which was hugely successful. The first two, The Beach and The Man in the Iron Mask, were panned by the critics and the second two, Gangs of New York and Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, did not make the impression expected of them.
Undeterred, DiCaprio continues to choose his projects slowly and carefully, always seeking to expand his range and present himself with new challenges.
"Working with people like Martin Scorsese and watching classic old films that are really pieces of art, I want to make sure that if I'm going to invest my time and energy into something and give myself wholeheartedly to it, I want it to be something that lasts," he says thoughtfully. "I want it to be special and really original. For me, the three elements that have to be there are: it has to be a great script, with a great director and great people to work with."
For now he is happy to accumulate the millions of dollars that flood his way, living, if not frugally, at least not in the accustomed style of Hollywood stars. He owns one car, a Toyota Prius, and does not fly around in private jets. Instead, he is saving for a future in which he will be able to make a real contribution to the welfare of the world.
"I want to accumulate enough money to say to myself, 'OK, now I'm going to do something really great and beneficial for other people or the environment or children," he says earnestly. "That's my ultimate goal and you can hold me to that 30 or 20 years from now. I want to really give back, but for now I want to sustain myself and be able to choose the roles I want to do and not have to pay for too many lavish expenses.
"My idea is to conserve money for those reasons."
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