Leonardo DiCaprio Q&A

23 March 2009

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An actor with acclaimed performances in films such as This Boy’s Life, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? and The Basketball Diaries to his name, Leonardo DiCaprio became a global superstar playing the lead  in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet and swiftly followed it up with the box office smash Titanic.

Since then he has amassed an impressive range of credits, headlining films such as The Gangs of New York, Catch Me If You Can, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, The Departed and Revolutionary Road, garnering three Oscar nominations in the process.

In Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies he is reunited with Russell Crowe, with whom he co-starred in The Quick & The Dead in 1995. He plays CIA operative Roger Ferris, working under Crowe’s Washington bound yet all seeing character Ed Hoffman in a murky tale of contemporary Middle Eastern politics.

What was the biggest challenge in working with Ridley Scott?

You have to try and encompass how much work Ridley has done throughout his career, and how comfortable he is in his craft. So much of the moviemaking process is waiting around for a director to figure out what they want, and here you have a director who is so precise and trims so much of the fat out of the process that none of it is a waste of time.

He instinctively reacts to things immediately on an actor’s level, such as whether he believes it or doesn’t, or he believes a scene will serve its purpose. The end result is that you walk away from making a movie probably a month and a half sooner than you would with most other filmmakers.

So how does he achieve that?

He sets up multiple cameras so that he has you covered from every different angle, and he’s able to control 20 different departments simultaneously. As an actor it makes you trust your instincts, because he trusts you and relies on you to know your character, and know how your character will react in any situation that he throws at you.

That instils a confidence in you. It’s a great working relationship and it’s different to most directors I’ve worked with, but it’s exhilarating and fantastic, it really is. I’d love to do it again.

Your character, Roger Ferris, is unusually sympathetic in this shady cloak and dagger world. Was that what appealed to you about him?

I liked this character a lot. I felt like, certainly in a turbulent time like we’re living in now while the US is occupying the Middle East, here you have a highly trained CIA operative who is very effective at what he does, who isn’t looking for that quick fix, the appearance of victory.

He’s looking for long term solutions and trying to respect the culture there and respect their ways, but ultimately be patriotic and pursue a positive result. Meanwhile his country is constantly undermining him. I feel like my character was operating in a higher moral context than his country would like him to, and that’s a fascinating character for me.

And he changes during the course of the film, doesn’t he?

He goes on a long journey in which he isn’t beholden to any country or idealistic thought, or political regime. He’s his own man and he doesn’t necessarily believe in the war any more and he walks off into the middle of the desert. I thought what a great character to be able to play, certainly at a time like this.

Did you study the Arabic dialects your character speaks, or was it done phonetically?

I don’t remember any of the language now. I got to work with a dialect coach who helped with all the different Arabic dialects, but it was very difficult. I have to work at it just like anything else.

I also have a great dialect coach Tim Monich who’s helped me in a lot of the films that I’ve done. But this was the hardest because it comes from a place in my throat that I don’t normally ever say any words in.

How physically demanding was this role?

I’ve done films that were similar in that regard. The pace of this movie was very demanding. I did most of my own stunts, there were certain sequences like I say, with Ridley Scott where I physically can’t be in two places at one time.

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