Leonardo DiCaprio is arguably one of the best actors of his generation. DiCaprio began acting around 1989 and quickly garnered success with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination in 1994 for his role in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Since 1994, DiCaprio has received five other nominations including four Best Actor nods for his work in The Aviator, Blood Diamond, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Revenant; and one Best Picture for his role as producer in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Sadly, despite his many nominations, DiCaprio has not been able to secure a single Oscar. Critics are hopeful that this will be his year.
With all the Oscar buzz and DiCaprio’s nomination, someone unearthed a video of DiCaprio’s first appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It is not the best footage, but it is worth watching then 19-year-old DiCaprio, who is nervously touching his face and playing with his hair, talk about his excitement in attending his first Academy Awards.
In discussing attending his first Oscars, he stated:
“I’m ready. I wanna go. It’s gonna be cool.”
I am only a couple of years younger than DiCaprio and have had a front seat in witnessing his rise in Hollywood. In 1994, I didn’t find him a particularly great actor and was rather annoyed with how so many girls swooned over him. I personally didn’t think he was going to last. Boy was I wrong!
Leno, on the other hand, knew exactly that DiCaprio would make it big.
After showing a clip of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Leno tells DiCaprio:
“You’re going to be a very big star.“
How right Leno was.
Here is the old video footage with Oscar discussion beginning at 2:07:
Featured image is a screenshot from Youtube.
