Leonardo DiCaprio comes flying into my suite at the Mondrian and nearly propels himself out the window. Which isn't such a great idea, considering that we're on the 11th floor.

"Holy shit" he yells, leaning his whole torso out into the air. "No suicide bars! This is very cool."
"Whoa, boy," I say, pulling him back into the room. "It would make a great ending to the story, but not a good beginning."
With only two major features to his credit- "This Boy's Life", in which he played a cocky teenager who's mother (Ellen Barkin) marries a bully (Robert DeNiro), and "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," in which he played a mentally handicapped boy in a family that gives true meaning to the word "dysfunctional" - Leonardo DiCaprio has garnered tremendous reviews, considerable awe and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination (for "Grape").
Now he's got two more movies coming out: "The Quick and the Dead", with Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman; and "The Basketball Diaries", in which he plays poet/hipster/junkie Jim Carroll. DiCaprio, who is just 19 and likes to clown around like a kid, seems on the verge of major stardom.

Tall and skinny, wearing a mismatched outfit that makes him look like a scarecrow, and a haircut that appears to have been done with a bowl, DiCaprio in person doesn't radiate Hollywood cool. But ask around town, and it's his name that comes up over and over again as the perfect actor for this role or that, the guy girls want to meet, the one everyone's whispering about.

The sun is blinding us when we flop down on the couches. "Do you mind?" I ask, pulling out my sunglasses.

"Not a bit," he says, putting on his. We look like two beatniks in a bad 50's movie.

"What do I call you?"

"Leonardo is fine."

"Do you still live at home?"

"I did until recently. I get along great with my parents. My mom and dad were divorced before I was even born, so I never knew anything different."

"Hmmm. A happy childhood, a rare Hollywood occurence..."

"You're right, it's not common. Usually people..."

"Are you an only child?"

"Yeah, which is very cool."

"I've never heard anybody say that. Everybody says, 'Oh, I really missed having sisters and brothers,' or 'I never blah, blah, blah."

"No, I loved it, " he says. "They allowed me to do so much stuff I wanted."

"Were you a Hollywood brat?"

"No way. Far from it. When I grew up, I lived in the ghettos of Hollywood. Right near the old Hollywood billiards. It was the crack of L.A. My mom came to this country from Germany when she was very young. She met my dad in college. They moved out to L.A. because they heard it was such a great place and then my mom became pregnant. They moved right into the heart of Hollywood, because they figured that's where all the great stuff was going on in this great town. Meanwhile, it was the most disgusting place to be."

"Someone told me you had problems in school," I say.

"Who?" He asks, narrowing his eyes.

"I have my sources," I tell him.

"I cheated a lot," he says without a blush.

"I always wanted to cheat," I say, "but I was spaced out."

"It's a very unique art, I think," he says, sitting up and getting into character. His whole demeanor changes as he slouches and becomes inconspicuous, his eyes darting around to see the imaginary teacher.

"It has to do with being aware of how the teacher is, first off, and seeing how much they notice, and the time that they do notice and the time they don't notice, and just pinpointing the times when they don't. And being hidden by other people's faces, and having somebody next to you who you're friends with and is extremely smart. I have to commend this guy named Mustafa, who probably helped me through three or four classes completely, just because I sat next to him every time, and I got to copy the homework right before the class started. If I had problems on a test, I'd just look over, and Mustafa would show me his paper and I would write it down.

"You gotta know about people," he continues, "and how they operate. I had a rough time in school. I just never got over the fact that we weren't allowed to learn what we wanted to learn. But then I asked myself why can't I just create a space for myself where I don't have to do math? Because I'm not good at it and if I have a problem on my taxes, I'll get a tax man. " He looks at me as if this were the most obvious point in the world.

"Easy for you to say," I say. "Now you're out of school, you're making a lot of money, doing a lot of movies, you can do anything, meet anyone, go anywhere, fuck anyone, buy anything..."

A warm grin spreads over DiCaprio's face. "Yeah," he says. "That's true."

"And?" I prod him.

"And what? It's great!"

"Were you popular as a kid?"

"Among my peers? No, I never was. What I would do in order to be popular was, I would put myself on the line and joke around and be wacky and funny, and I was always known as the crazy little kid. I did impressions, all of it. Then I realized that that's not what I want to do. I don't want to be a comedian to please other people."

"And now people think you're cool just because of who you are," I point out.

"Which is cool," he retorts.

"Okay," I say, laughing despite myself. "Let's talk about your movies. In the book "The Basketball Diaries," Jim Carroll does unbelievable things to support his drug habit. He's really the first out-of-control grown-up you've ever played."

"I'll say," he says. "I had to do all kinds of things I've never done. I had this one terrifying scene where I was supposed to stand in front of a really big group and read poetry. I have this thing, which I've pretty much cleared up, but I hate speaking in front of a large audience. I don't know where it came from..."

"From deep inside your soul," I say sagely.

"Probably. So in this scene, I was messing up over and over again, and Lorraine Bracco was the only person who was getting on me, saying, 'You can do it, you can do it.' And I finally ended up doing it right. She's the best woman I've ever worked with. Woman, as far as older than me."

He ignores me.

"And Bruno Kirby, which was a thrill, because I loved him in "When Harry Met Sally...That was the movie I saw on my first date."

I sit straight up. "How old were you? Where were you? What'd you wear?"

DiCaprio closes his eyes. "I went out with this girl named Cessi, this little Spanish beautiful girl. I was in the eighth grade. We had this beautiful relationship over the phone all summer, she was away, and we were so close and so bonded and we'd tell each other everything. And then she came home, and we went out to the movies for the first time, and oh God, I wanted it to be so perfect. So I put on my light-blue turtleneck, which I thought was cool at the time. It was a turtleneck I bought at Kmart or something. When I saw Cessi, I was petrified and I couldn't even look her in the eye or speak to her."

"After telling her your deepest thoughts on the phone all summer?"

"Exactly. That's the way humans are. And then we saw "When Harry Met Sally"... and I couldn't move, I couldn't look at her in the seat or anything. But the movie took me away. For two hours I was at peace because she was watching the movie and I didn't have this responsibility on me to be Superboy. And then afterwards, I remember eating a French dip and I was trying to get some control of the situation. So I was trying to not put her down exactly, but I was looking at her like she was ridiculous while she was eating this French dip. And she was really shy. And finally she said, "Do you have a problem with me eating this sandwich?" And I said, 'No, no, not at all.' But I was acting really weird. And that was our last date. I was in love with her for a year after taht but I couldn't go near her, because I was so mortified. So that's my first-date story."

"Go ahead," I say. "I love this stuff."

I thought we were gonna talk about movies," he says.

"Okay, I heard you might be playing James Dean in a movie."

"I'm not sure, I've been thinking it over for months. I need to know what the script is like, who's going to direct, those things. It's probably the hardest decision I've had to make over any film, because I respect the guy's work so much. But at the same time there's this pressure that I put on myself to ask whether or not I'm gonna do James Dean as me or as him. There's pressure if you do James Dean- people are gonna be critical of you because there are so many fanatics. But in order to do it, I have to make him my own. Because there's no way to duplicate him exactly, nobody can do that, it's impossible. The question is, how am I going to do him?"