Joaquin Phoenix and Leonardo DiCaprio are each 49 years previous, they’ve each received an Oscar and are among the many greatest stars within the business. However up to now, nobody might compete with DiCaprio – a lot to the chagrin of the “Joker” star.
Common Footage / Warner Bros.
It is actually not straightforward to say your self as an actor in Hollywood: Even when you have already got quite a few top-class initiatives in your portfolio, you must assert your self towards numerous rivals for every function – together with many a famous person Oscar winner was already at a drawback.
Ever since his Academy Award win for “Joker” (2019), Joaquin Phoenix has been one of many few actors who can truly select their roles – and who’re courted by essentially the most famend filmmakers as an alternative of laboriously going from casting to casting drag. The 49-year-old was final seen within the cinema as “Napoleon” below the route of Ridley Scott; the sequel to “Joker” will hit native screens on October 3, 2024.
However that wasn’t all the time the case, as Phoenix himself admitted. Previously, he too needed to have coveted roles snatched from below his nostril – often by a colleague who turned one of many greatest Hollywood stars at a really younger age and who remains to be one of many prime stars many years later. After all we’re speaking about Leonardo DiCaprio!
Joaquin Phoenix on Leonardo DiCaprio: “No actor would ever say his identify”
Throughout his acceptance speech on the twenty sixth SAG Awards (the place he additionally received for “Joker”), Phoenix recounted how he – and lots of of his colleagues – needed to again down greater than as soon as when confronted with the ” Titanic” actor and later Oscar winner (“The Revenant”) needed to compete (by way of TNT).
“After I first began appearing and going to auditions, I might all the time present as much as the final deadline, and I believe lots of people know what that is like,” the “Gladiator” star stated. “There have been all the time two different guys I used to be competing towards. And we all the time misplaced to that one boy. No actor would ever say his identify as a result of it might be an excessive amount of, however each casting director would whisper his identify: ‘It is Leonardo, it is Leonardo!'”
In truth, the 49-year-old was thought-about massively influential within the business early on, with even Christian Bale solely getting his iconic function in American Psycho as a result of DiCaprio turned it down. You will discover out how he managed to get the contract ultimately within the following article:
“Hear, I am doing this film”: Christian Bale did EVERYTHING to land one in all his most iconic roles
That is an up to date republication of an article that beforehand appeared on FILMSTARTS.