Ate raw bison liver, slept in animal carcass
In an interview with Yahoo Movies, DiCaprio says that The Revenant was one of the most challenging of his career.
I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers or sleeping in animal carcasses or what I ate on set. [I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly. I certainly don’t eat raw bison liver on a regular basis. When you see the movie, you’ll see my reaction to it because Alejandro [Inarritu] kept it in. It says it all. It was an instinctive reaction.
On talk that some staff left the film:
I wasn’t privy to exactly what went on. But to me, most of the people were there working incredibly hard, and they should be given due credit for the effort they gave this movie because everyone I saw was giving their heart and soul to pursuing his vision.
Esquire interview
DiCaprio talks about what comes with being the lead in a movie:
There’s so much more responsibility in being a lead. There’s the arc of that character and how each of your decisions affects the story line. When I was in Gilbert Grape, I could spit spaghetti out and climb trees and make any noise I wanted, because Johnny had to move the story along, for the story to make sense.
The Talks interview
DiCaprio gives an interview to The Talks. He discusses challenging himself with every film he does.
That really depends on the role. It’s always this grand search in the industry to find good material. Whenever there is good material they all jump on it and it’s like a food fight to get it made. That’s why so many things take years and years to develop because it all shows up on screen. If there are holes in the story structure, if it’s not a compelling, moving narrative, that shows on screen and the movie fails.
Esquire interview
DiCaprio gives his thoughts on the fame he attained after starring in the movie Titanic:
It wasn’t the era of penetrating Internet paparazzi that we have now. But my name wasn’t me anymore. I was sort of this thing. Kate felt it, too. But a lot of the attention was on me because of the teenage girls who repeatedly went to see the movie. I had the blond hair, and I was Jack Dawson, this heroic figure. So I set up everything in my personal life to rebel against that image in order to strip it down. I had a lot of fun stripping it down. But ultimately, that knocked me a few rungs down the ladder.