Christopher Nolan Once Called Leonardo DiCaprio an ‘Extremely Demanding’ Actor
Christopher Nolan finally got a chance to work with Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2010 film Inception. After collaborating with the Oscar-winner, DiCaprio’s own passion towards his craft only helped Nolan’s film even more.
Leonardo DiCaprio felt like ‘Inception’ would be a challenge to pull off
DiCaprio has a diverse film portfolio where he’s led some very high-concept projects. Inception is right up there with one of his more creatively complex features. The film saw DiCaprio as an expert thief who specialized in entering people’s dreams to steal their ideas.
It was a story that could’ve risked confusing its audiences because of its dense material. But DiCaprio had faith in Nolan’s ability as a storyteller to ensure that such a complicated narrative wouldn’t fall apart.
“Complex and ambiguous are the perfect way to describe the story,” DiCaprio once told the Los Angeles Times. “And it’s going to be a challenge to ultimately pull it off. But that is what Chris Nolan specializes in. He has been able to convey really complex narratives that work on a multitude of different layers simultaneously to an audience and make it entertaining and engaging throughout.”
The Oscar-winner pointed at Nolan’s past films as evidence of his capabilities.
“You look at Insomnia or Memento, these movies are working on so many different levels. That’s his expertise; it’s what he does best, as a matter of fact,” DiCaprio added.
Christopher Nolan once called Leonardo DiCaprio an ‘extremely demanding’ actor
Inception wasn’t the first time Nolan wanted to work with DiCaprio. He’d been meaning to collaborate with the megastar for years, but the right project hadn’t presented itself yet until the sci-fi feature. Teaming up with DiCaprio, Nolan saw that the star had certain creative standards when it came to the writing of his characters. This only benefited Inception’s narrative.
“He is extremely demanding, which actually helped me work out in Inception wherein there is emotional importance in the story,” Nolan once told NDTV (via Female First).
In a 2010 interview with Collider, Nolan offered a bit more insight into the creative demands from DiCaprio. These kinds of conversations with the actor inspired Nolan to make even more changes to his project.
“The truthfulness of what he talks about the underlying truths of the character-emotional truths. The journey that character is on, and so we spent months talking about the script and re-writing the script. I spent a long time re-writing the script to make sure that the emotional journey of his character was the…that’s the driving force of the movie,” Nolan said.
Christopher Nolan and Leonardo DiCaprio both have trouble dabbling in sci-fi worlds
Apart from Inception, Nolan and DiCaprio have experimented in sci-fi territory before. It’s a genre that Nolan has continued to leave his mark on with films like Interstellar and Tenet. But when talking to the filmmaker, DiCaprio discovered they both shared similar concerns about going deep into science fiction.
“The earliest conversations I had with Chris were about how both of us have a hard time with science fiction. We have a little bit of an aversion to it because it’s hard for us to emotionally invest in worlds that are too far detached from what we know,” DiCaprio once told MTV News.
But DiCaprio felt Nolan’s sci-fi stories were more unique than most.
“That’s what’s interesting about Chris Nolan’s science-fiction worlds. They’re deeply rooted visually in things that we’ve seen before. There are cultural references and it feels like a world that is tactile, that we understand, that we could jump into and it’s not too much of a leap of faith to make,” DiCaprio said.
