"Verlaine was his lover, no?" I say.
"That's not what the story is about, but yes, I will have to kiss him on screen."
My eyebrows go up and down. DiCaprio laughs. "I don't have a problem with doing a film about a relationship of love with another man," he says. "That's just acting, you know what I mean? But as far as the kissing stuff, that's really hard for me, I'm not kidding. But I've faced the fact that I'm gonna have to do it, and I'm gonna do it because I supposedly loved the guy. But the movie isn't about homosexuality, although I'm sure that's what the press is gonna be all over. Have you ever kissed a girl?"
I hesititate, wanting to phrase this so he'll understand. "No," I finally say. "Not in the way you mean."
"Could you?" he asks.
"Could I what?" I say.
"Kiss a girl." He seems to be liking asking the questions.
"For money?" I ask.
"Oh, yeah, for money. Because the money's gonna be there, you're making a film. So could you?"
"Yes," I answer, no faltering.
DiCaprio smiles. "I'll tell you about the first kiss that I had," he says, "It was the most disgusting thing in my life. The girl injected about a pound of saliva into my mouth, and when I walked away, I had to spit it all out. It was awful."
"Have you ever kissed a guy?" I ask.
He looks at me with all seriousness. "My publicist told me that if I felt uncomfortable with a question, I should just say so."
"You little shit," I shreik. "You asked me first..."
He's laughing. "I'm only kidding. I'm not uncomfortable. And no, I've never kissed a guy. But when I have to do that scene, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm going to go in there, and I'm going to walk over to him, and I'm going to stick my tongue down his fucking throat and probably swerve it around a bit. That's it, end of story. On that day I will have no fears or qualms about it."
"I know actors how have to get drunk before they do the scenes that really scare them."
"That has to do with insecurity. If I commit myself to a movie, I'm gonna have to go through with it. I think that's sort of cool of me, actually."
"Yes, it's very big of you, Leonardo."
"Excuse me," he says. "I have to go to the bathroom." He heads in there and continues talking, not closing the door behind him. "The thing I love to do is to get into different characters. And you find with each one that there are things that make you uncomfortable. That's the part I like, to get past the unease." He comes back and flops down on the couch.
"Don't you shut the door?"
"Guess not. It's usually just me and my mom at home, so
I guess sometimes I just pee with the door
open. So where
were we?"
"I think we were discussing swapping spit."
"Actually," he says seriously, "it's pretty disgusting when you think about it. I mean, people are so concerned about eating off the same fork as someone else, and even though you like somebody, do you know that the human mouth is one of the dirtiest things on this planet? A dog's mouth is cleaner. There's so much bacteria and slime and disgust and trapped food and bad breath in a mouth..."
"Jesus, Leonardo, keep this up and I'll never kiss my boyfriend again."
"I'm just saying," he says.
"Wait, you have kissed a girl?"
"Yes, I have," he says. "But I have to be really happy with the girl, if you know what I mean."
"Enough," I beg.
"Can't you get herpes form kissing?" he asks, as if I'm Dr. Ruth.
"Leonardo..."
"I mean venereal herpes," he says.
"I give up," I say, throwing my hands in the air.
We order lunch and try to get this interview back on track. He gets the grilled chicken breast and mashed potatoes. When it comes, he cups his arm around his plate and basically shovels the food down in big gulps. He continues talking the whole time.
"Tell me about what it's like attending the Academy Awards as a nominee," I say.
"Okay, this is what I thought. The Academy Awards was a big burden for me because of my problem of speaking in front of big audiences. I'm doing a lot better with it now, but it was just this gutwrenching fear of slipping up and doing something horrible..."
"In front of three billion people.."
"Yeah, or crying, or doing something that's embarrassing, because I'm such a critical person of other people, when I watch people who do that, I go, 'Oh God, what a fuckin' idiot.' And I put that pressure on myself. So I was dreading winning. It was like this weight on my shoulders for so long, and there were some people who were saying, 'Hey, you might have a chance.' And I was saying, 'No,no, I'm not gonna win.' And I was convincing myself and I said, 'I'm not even gonna plan a speech because I know I'm not gonna win.' And I invited my mom and my dad and my stepmom. I was so and when I get nervous my palms start to sweat, and i just start to twitch, sort of like an animal. And then I came to the Awards and people started telling me, 'You know what, you have a pretty good chance of winning tonight.' And this thing started to consume me and I started shaking in my seat and having this posed smile, and inside being petrified. And mine was the first one up, and my mom had to go to the bathroom. And they said, 'Okay, the nominees for best Supporting Actor...' and my mom wasn't there! And I knew if my mom wasn't there, it would be terrible. I saw this guard holding my mom back. She aws trying to jump through a bunch of people, and they showed the first person, and said 'Tommy Lee Jones' in "The Fugitive.' I knew I had to do something. My mom had to be next to me. So I turned to the security guards and I mouthed, 'Let her fucking in.' And then the guy looked at me, and I said, 'I'm a nominee.' I never do that kind of shit, but I figured this was really important. And my mom just scooted by and jumped in the seat and in, like five seconds, she adjusted herself. I adjusted myself, and I was sitting there with this smile on my face like, 'Aw, God, this is great.' Meanwhile, I'm about ready to die. And when they announced Tommy Lee Jones had won, I wanted to get down on the ground and thank God. Nobody was happier for him than me, that's the fucking truth."
"People were so blown away by your performance in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." You know those disability parts often win the Oscar," I say.
"'Gilbert Grape' was a fantastic experience for me. Before that, I didn't know where I wanted to go as an actor."
"Do you know now?"
"I'm getting there, yeah. During 'Gilbert Grape' I didn't know where I was gonna go as an actor so I didn't know what types of movies I wanted to do. I just felt like doing a movie is doing a movie, I get money and fame, and that's great, and I can act and have fun. And I was up for a movie called 'Hocus Pocus' with Bette Midler, and I knew it was awful, but it was just like, 'Okay, they're offering me more and more money. Isn't that what you do? You do movies and you get more and more money.' But something inside of me kept saying, 'Don't do this movie.' And everyone around me was saying, 'Leonardo, how could you not take a movie?' And I said to myself, 'Okay, I'll audition for this movie 'Gilbert Grape.' If I don't get that, I'll do 'Hocus Pocus'. I found myself trying so hard, investing so much time and energy in 'Gilbert Grape', I worked so damn hard at it and I finally got it, and it was like such a weight off my shoulders."
"Well, besides all the other great things 'Gilbert Grape' is, it's also the movie that saved you from 'Hocus Pocus.' That's fabulous. And so, what was it you figured out that you wanted to be doing as an actor?"
"I want to do things that are different. Not necessarily different just to be different, but something that I can get into with other actors who are quality actors and a quality director and a good script."
"Oh, that," I say, as if there aren't 20 million other actors wanting that same, easy thing from life.
"With 'The Quick and the Dead', I really had to think it through for a long time. It was honestly not my idea of the type of movie that I wanted to do next. I turned it down like at least 10 to 20 times. Then on the last day, they said, 'Hey, look, they really want you, and this is the last day you can have the role, because they're gonna hire somebody else.' Everyone around me was saying 'Look, this is a good movie.' I had this thing about not doing big commercial movies, because all the big commercial movies, not all of them, but most of the mainstream movies are just pieces of garbage that have been done over thousands of times. But then I looked at 'The Quick and the Dead', and I thought, 'Okay, Sharon Stone's in it, and I think, disregarding her superstardom, the woman definitely has something going on, and Gene Hackman's in it, and Sam Raimi is a completely innovative director. My character's somebody that's so completely insecure in himself that he has to put on a show to dazzle everybody, and that to me started to become interesting. But the kid was cool at the same time, he developed this thing about being cool, he wasn't afraid of anybody, except for his father, Gene Hackman. So I thought, look, I'm not working, I could do something different and I can have fun with this movie and why not? So I did it, and there's a difference between doing something that's mainstream and big budget and schlocky, and doing something that's mainstream and big budget and has something interesting in it. I just went in there, I did what I had to do, and it was fun and I'm glad I did it."
Whew, this boy can talk. "How'd you decide to
do 'Basketball Diaries?'