Leonardo DiCaprio slept in dead animal carcasses on the set of 'The Revenant'.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio

The 40-year-old actor, who plays a fur trapper that sets out on a path of vengeance against his hunting team who left him for dead after a bear mauling in the new film, admits he was forced to do "some of the most difficult things" he's ever done during the gruelling nine-month shoot in Canada and Argentina.

The four-time Oscar nominee said: "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."

Leonardo says a lot of his horrified reactions in the film were genuine.

He told Yahoo! Movies: "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 [González Iñárritu, the director] kept it in. It says it all. It was an instinctive reaction."

But the heartthrob insists he has no regrets about signing on to start in the film alongside Tom Hardy and Domhnall Gleeson.

He said: "It's going to be one of the most unique film-going experiences that audiences have seen in modern times."