The film that will undoubtedly etch Leonardo DiCaprio’s name in cinematic history is The Wolf of Wall Street.
This dark comedy, running for three hours, premiered in 2013, featuring DiCaprio as the infamous stockbroker Jordan Belfort, a role that reunited him with director Martin Scorsese. The film also marked a significant milestone for Margot Robbie, who played Belfort’s former wife Naomi Lapaglia, appearing in several scenes without clothes, a decision she reportedly made herself.
While Scorsese was willing to modify a scene to allow her to wear a robe, Robbie felt strongly that “that’s not what [Naomi] would do in that scene,” as she explained on the Talking Pictures podcast.
“The whole point is that she’s going to come out completely naked — that’s the card she’s playing,” Robbie elaborated.
Aside from Robbie’s bold scenes, another memorable moment in the film features DiCaprio’s character attempting to navigate stairs while under the influence of quaaludes.
Jordan Belfort himself offered guidance to DiCaprio on how to authentically portray being under the influence for this particular scene.
“I showed him what it looks and feels like when you are high on quaaludes,” Belfort shared with the New York Post in 2018, recalling, “I started crawling around. We were both on the floor, drooling. His father walked into the room and asked us what the f*ck we were doing.”
Although that scene is now iconic, DiCaprio initially believed it would be a brief moment in the film.
DiCaprio recently talked about this on the New Heights podcast with Travis and Jason Kelce.
In his latest film, One Battle After Another, there’s a scene where his character is tased, prompting Jason to inquire: “Is it harder to act like you’ve been tased or that you’re high on quaaludes?”
DiCaprio responded, “I gotta say about that quaalude sequence, I didn’t know when I was shooting it but we were there for three or four days.”
He continued: “I thought it was a couple shots and [Martin Scorsese] had 50 shots of me crawling around, up and down the stairs, falling, getting in the car.”
DiCaprio also noted that the tase scene in One Battle After Another ‘took 20 minutes’.
Additionally, during the podcast, DiCaprio disclosed that he was once nearly pressured to adopt a stage name because his real name was deemed ‘too ethnic’.
He recounted how his agent suggested a change to Lenny Williams, but his father insisted he keep his birth name, leading to the international star being known as Leonardo DiCaprio.