Leonardo DiCaprio on the cover of Rolling Stone

By Greg Hernandez on Jul 21, 2010 11:19 am | 

So many child stars not only have trouble transitioning to adult stardom, they have trouble transitioning to adulthood period.

Not Leonardo DiCaprio.

The kid who got his start on Growing Pains has always had the talent and as a teenager starred in such provocative movies as Total Eclipse, The Basketball Diaries, This Boys Life and an Oscar-nominated performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?

Superstardom came in 1997, when he was just 22, with the phenomenon that was The Titanic.

Instead of losing his way, DiCaprio became more choosy than ever about his projects and worked with top-flight directors such as Martin Scorsese (The Aviator, Gangs of New York, The Departedand Shutter Island), Steven Spielberg (Catch Me if You Can) and Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road). Leo was also nominated for an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in Blood Diamond directed by Edward Zwick.

His latest collaboration is with director Christopher Nolan in Inception which opened at number one at the box office last weekend. Taking in $62 million in its first three days, the film was the biggest opening of Leo’s career!

I met Leo at the Academy Awards nominees luncheon the year he was nominated for Blood Diamond. It was a surreal event for me because I was seated right next to Jennifer Hudson and Leo and Mark Wahlberg were at the next table.

Then about a year later, I made a late night stop at the Taco Bell near Beverly Center and Leo was there with two female friends. He was low-key and not drawing attention to himself but when a couple of employees asked him to pose for pictures with them, he happily obliged.

He’s someone who seems comfortable with his stardom but whose main priority is being an actor.

But this does not mean he does not have anxious moments: “[My stomach churns over] really stupid stuff,” DiCaprio reveals in the newRolling Stone cover story. “Things that shouldn’t make you anxious whatsoever. It’s crazy how your mind will become this database to make you worry about things that are so arbitrary. I have a well-organized life, and I’ve put a lot of thought into the things that I do, and then, you know, my stomach will be…I’ll just be sitting there, totally anxious about something ridiculous.”

greginhollywood.com