"I can’t believe I’m being gaslighted by a room full of children"

February 20, 2020 11:20 AM

Was Leonardo DiCaprio Actually a Star Before Titanic? An intra-Slate Gen X debate.
posted by Atom Eyes (110 comments total)

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posted by zamboni at 11:27 AM on February 20, 2020 [24 favorites]

You can't compare DiCaprio's then-level of fame to current Chalamet levels because Internet.
posted by tzikeh at 11:30 AM on February 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

Romeo + Juliet on VHS definitely made him a star for 11 year-olds (source: me). He wasn't a Julia Roberts level star, but then, who is?
posted by grandiloquiet at 11:31 AM on February 20, 2020 [13 favorites]

This article doesn't so much as mention The Quick and the Dead.

Fuck this article.

QED.
posted by Naberius at 11:44 AM on February 20, 2020 [16 favorites]

He absolutely was. There's a difference between a star's first blockbuster, and a star's first break. He was on Growing Pains, and he was in R+J.

Saying he wasn't a star before Titanic is like saying Tom Hanks wasn't a star before Forrest Gump.
posted by explosion at 11:44 AM on February 20, 2020 [37 favorites]

The problem here is that you can be over the line for “super famous” and still, at some level, be incredibly unknown outside of a demographic. Jeffree Star is super famous, and huge swathes of the population have no idea he exists. Beyonce is some word beyond famous, some word that barely exists in the mind, and yet she has a huge number of songs that I wouldn't even recognize if they came on the radio. Douglas Adams mused that discovering how significant you were relative to how significant you perceived yourself to be would crush you to death, but there’s a kind of inverse here as well: you only need a small, tightly connected group of people to think of you as the bee’s knees in order to be assumed to be a huge star.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:46 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

I had a vague idea who Tom Scocca is and that he says things I generally agree with on politics? He has been transformed in my mind to an extremely reliable source on Leonardo DiCrapio famedom timelines, holding the line against gaslighting children.

You can't compare DiCaprio's then-level of fame to current Chalamet levels because Internet.

I'm honestly not sure which direction you're going here by saying this.

FWIW my take is DiCaprio was grabbing fame when there was a smaller group that could command attention, while Chalamet is just kind of well known when that's not so challenging. So I agree if that's your point.
posted by mark k at 11:46 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Like, this shouldn't even be up for debate except it's standard chauvinism that dictates that if someone's popular with women, girls, or children, it doesn't count. They're not "popular" until adult men have them on their radar.

I do like to subvert this attitude by pointing out to folks that Lin-Manuel Miranda's most popular musical is Moana, not Hamilton.
posted by explosion at 11:47 AM on February 20, 2020 [67 favorites]

"Roughly the same proportion of the moviegoing audience knows who Timothée Chalamet is now as knew who Leonardo DiCaprio was in 1997. And I maintain it’s not a very high proportion."

"Timothee Chalamet is not currently a movie star" is a very challenging defensive position that Kois has chosen.
posted by Kwine at 11:48 AM on February 20, 2020 [7 favorites]

I'm really enjoying this episode of "The Paradox of the Heap".
posted by J.K. Seazer at 11:50 AM on February 20, 2020 [9 favorites]

I didn't read the article because the top photo caption led me to assume this whole thing is a piss-take (Bold/italics mine):

Dec. 14, 1997. The Hollywood premiere of Titanic. Was Leonardo DiCaprio (left) a little-known actor? Or was he already a huge star, like Billy Zane?

posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:51 AM on February 20, 2020 [22 favorites]

The answer to this really depends more on how you define star than on how you look at Leonard diCaprio's career. It's also helpful to keep in mind that this was before the era of the summer blockbuster being the be-all-and-end-all of movies people talked about.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:51 AM on February 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

tzikeh hints at it, but this article brings up an even more interesting point other than when Leo got famous - back then (when I was a kid) there were people who were "famous with teens" but not with the general populace. that's not really an occurrence in today's times. Millie Bobbie Brown is a prime example of someone who would have been FWT in the 90s. Is it the internet? Probably. But I also think it has to do with the way that child (or teen or young adult) actors look now compared to how they looked in the 90s.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:53 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

explosion: Saying he wasn't a star before Titanic is like saying Tom Hanks wasn't a star before Forrest Gump.

Or saying that Kanye West discovered Paul McCartney (E! News, Jan. 2015). "I don't know who Paul McCartney is, but Kanye is going to give this man a career w/ this new song!!"
posted by filthy light thief at 11:54 AM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

What's eating Gilbert Grape put him within touching distance of stardom and R+J made him a star (but only because of prior roles).
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:57 AM on February 20, 2020 [11 favorites]

half the staff of Slate, looking at a picture of Leo in 1996: "sorry to this man"
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:59 AM on February 20, 2020 [9 favorites]

He was ubiquitous on MTV just for R+J at a time when MTV was the visual medium/channel for anyone under 30.

He was famous.
posted by oddman at 12:00 PM on February 20, 2020 [22 favorites]

I saw every movie he was in before Titanic was released, so he definitely seemed famous to me. Even Critters 3! If they were available at my local video store, town population of 3000, the movies couldn't have been too obscure. He was in two different movies with De Niro before Titanic!
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:02 PM on February 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

He was totally a star (Basketball Diaries, anyone?), and Kate Winslet had already made a name for herself in Heavenly Creatures and Hamlet, thankyouverymuch! She wasn't an "unknown" by any stretch of the imagination.

Not that Hamlet was very good...
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:11 PM on February 20, 2020 [10 favorites]

But I also think it has to do with the way that child (or teen or young adult) actors look now compared to how they looked in the 90s.

That's also a function of 90s fashion.
posted by explosion at 12:11 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

Kate Winslet did Heavenly Creatures with Peter Jackson, Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant (and Alan Rickman), and Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh. And not little one scene parts, either; those were all substantial if not leading roles.

Not only were they both stars, they were both stars who had been cast in Titanic because they had the potential to become superstars. They were not plucked out of obscurity.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:11 PM on February 20, 2020 [25 favorites]

I'd stopped watching Growing Pains by the time he joined the cast and I didn't read teen magazines but I certainly knew who he was by the time Titanic came out, mainly from What's Eating Gilbert Grape? I recall at the time there was a lot of buzz about his transformative performance and how his career trajectory was mirroring that of co-star Johnny Depp (a young TV actor making the transition to legitimate film stardom by taking on challenging roles.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:11 PM on February 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

Romeo + Juliet was a huge movie. Yes, some of the moviegoing public at the time wouldn't have seen it or been interested in it, but the idea that "not famous with some demographic slice" = "not famous", or even "famous with teenagers" = "not famous" is incoherent. He was absolutely already a movie star when Titanic came out, if a young one.

By way of full disclosure: I was 15 when Romeo + Juliet came out. I had not, at that age, seen any other movie Leo was in and I didn't watch Growing Pains, but I definitely knew who he was. That's the level of fame he already had.
posted by penduluum at 12:14 PM on February 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

Lol it's not like he had already starred in a movie opposite Robert DeNiro or anything. What even? Of course he was a star.
posted by Ruki at 12:14 PM on February 20, 2020

I thought Kate Winslet was the big star going into Titanic, I must admit. I knew who Decaprio was, and wanted to see how Gilbert Grape could do in a tentpole film. R+J was a near miss, should have been what Moulin Rouge was, but it wasn't clear to me if that almost failure was the director or the stars or what.
posted by bonehead at 12:28 PM on February 20, 2020

What a strange question, Slate. The answer is yes and there's not much debate to it.

I will sheepishly admit that I spent too much time on sidebar linked article: "I Am Very Sad Justin Bieber’s Disgusting Mustache Is Gone". I will agree that I too am very sad that Justin Bieber shaved off his hoser moustache. 70s Hockey Moustaches 4 EVAR!
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:30 PM on February 20, 2020 [9 favorites]

I will agree that I too am very sad that Justin Bieber shaved off his hoser moustache. 70s Hockey Moustaches 4 EVAR!

That boy needs to embrace full hockey hair by growing out his salad.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:32 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

OK, tail end Gen X here. Both these actors were absolutely known quantities. Winslet had also been in Jude with Harvey Keitel. A google N-gram comparing Leo to a couple contemporaries shows that by 1998 he'd exceeded in media mentions both River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke, who were arguably "stars".
posted by St. Oops at 12:33 PM on February 20, 2020 [4 favorites]

I added Matt Dillon and Val Kilmer to the N-gram for a couple more interesting data points.
posted by St. Oops at 12:38 PM on February 20, 2020

Not sure how this controversy exists. He was one of the two leads of Romeo + Juliet. It was a huge film for our generation. It took in $147M in box office, on a budget of $14M, numbers which are a success by any pre-Marvel-era measure and which would give status to its leads to pursue projects like Titanic and so on. Next exposé: Gen Xers debate early-onset amnesia and who has it?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:39 PM on February 20, 2020 [19 favorites]

Both Winslet and DiCaprio were solidly B-list by the time Titanic was released. Is the argument that B-list celebrities aren't stars?

I mean, they were hired specifically because they were B-list. Titanic was a risky, big-budget, special-effects-heavy movie in a time when those effects and the enormous water-based sets were hugely expensive. And it didn't necessarily have a built-in audience. People forget how big of a risk that movie was perceived to be. So Cameron couldn't afford to have unknowns cast in the leads, but at the same time he couldn't get too spendy on an already bloated budget by casting A-listers.

Lot's of people knew who they were, and the fact that a big part of their fanbase may have been teens and women, as commenters here have already noted, is definitely why that's not being recognized.
posted by theory at 12:43 PM on February 20, 2020 [4 favorites]

He was famous enough that I resisted seeing Titanic for some time because he was in it. (Nothing against Leo personally, I was just anti-popular people at the time).
posted by meinvt at 12:44 PM on February 20, 2020 [9 favorites]

Thinking back on R+J, I'd really like to see this debate on Slate: "Pete Postlethwaite: Sexy Priest or Sexiest Priest"?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:47 PM on February 20, 2020 [7 favorites]

I knew who Leonardo DiCaprio was before Titanic was released. But I've never seen Gilbert Grape or Romeo + Juliet.

On the other hand, I had no idea who Tom Cruise was before Interview with a Vampire was released. I have also never seen Top Gun or Risky Business.

I think this just proves that fame is an entirely subjective thing, to each person's personal interests and media access/exposure. The intra-office Slack fight was mildly amusing though, always willing to watch coworkers freak out at each other over popular culture.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 12:50 PM on February 20, 2020

proposed cast for the A-List version of Titanic:

Keanu Reeves - Jack
Winona Ryder - Rose
Gary Oldman - boat
posted by roger ackroyd at 12:51 PM on February 20, 2020 [20 favorites]

R+J was a near miss, should have been what Moulin Rouge was

We must take great care to never meet in person, lest we annihilate each other in a deadly spray of particles and anti-particles.
posted by Naberius at 12:53 PM on February 20, 2020 [16 favorites]

I thought the headline was a joke. To this old millennial there literally WAS no bigger heartthrob at the time Titanic came out! Romeo + Juliet was the biggest hit of the year at my school when it came out and it was absolutely because Leo was fine as hell in it.
posted by potrzebie at 12:55 PM on February 20, 2020 [7 favorites]

In my memory, (I was 16 when Titanic was released) he was famous before Titanic but Titanic made him a household name, a phrase I'm surprised hasn't come up in this discussion yet.
posted by acidnova at 12:58 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Honestly, Kois just seem kind of dumb, or one of those people who believes their own personal level of obliviousness applies to everyone. "Winslet was an unknown"? She already had an Oscar nom and a BAFTA Best Actress along with a pile of other nominations and wins for both _Heavenly Creatures_ and _Sense and Sensibility_. You can argue what level of star she was, but you cannot call her an unknown.
posted by tavella at 1:00 PM on February 20, 2020 [9 favorites]

OK, sorry. Mixed up some movies there. The Winslet-Keitel film was Holy Smoke from a couple of years later.
posted by St. Oops at 1:00 PM on February 20, 2020

I saw Leo in several movies before Titanic, although looking back on it is was because he was working with Directors I liked. I saw R+J because I liked Luhrman, and The Quick and the Dead for Raimi.

Girls I dated at the time though he was dreamy, but he played real roles. Jack was probably the lightest role I had ever seen him in. Before Titanic he was well known, and not for being in the pages of Tiger Beat.
posted by Badgermann at 1:06 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

What's Eating Gilbert Grape was a financial flop, but DiCaprio got an Oscar nomination for it, which was his pattern up until R+J--good notices for unsuccessful films. R+J made him a star, whatever that means or meant.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:10 PM on February 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

Keanu Reeves

I think a better question is was Keanu Reeves a star before Speed? Bill & Ted, Bram Stokers Dracula. Was Point Break the movie that made him a star, or Speed, or Bill & Ted?
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:12 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Bill & Ted was his Gilbert Grape, Speed his Titanic.
posted by Lyme Drop at 1:21 PM on February 20, 2020 [15 favorites]

Through the whole debate I was thinking, "What about when he starred in Good Will Hunting?"

Shows how closely I pay attention.
posted by clawsoon at 1:22 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

I think a better question is was Keanu Reeves a star before Speed?

I would say that Speed proved that Keanu Reeves was a star. Bill & Ted and Point Break could have been written off as "Those movies would have been hits regardless of whether Keanu was in them", but Speed was very much on his shoulders.
posted by Etrigan at 1:24 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

Was Leo a star? Depends -- did he earn more than his co-star Kate?
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:32 PM on February 20, 2020

I worked at a public library when Titanic came out. We had a copier, I think it was 15 cents a page. An enterprising middle school girl had a huge photo book tie in for Titanic and would charge her classmates 25 cents a page to be allowed to make copies from it, pages with DiCaprio were the most popular by far. There would be entire table of girls passing the book around trying to decide what pages they wanted on the budget of their leftover allowances. The librarians discussed maybe putting a stop to it but decided against it, everyone seemed satisfied and they let other patrons use the printer when they needed too.

I felt that movie just cemented his popularity.
posted by lepus at 1:34 PM on February 20, 2020 [18 favorites]

My personal benchmark for stardom is: "Would this person make Entertainment Tonight's birthday wishes list?" I couldn't swear it 100%, but I strongly believe that Leo would have made ET's birthday lists any time after Gilbert Grape.
posted by mhum at 1:35 PM on February 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

R+J was a near miss, should have been what Moulin Rouge was, but it wasn't clear to me if that almost failure was the director or the stars or what.

OK WHAT

One of those movies has 100% stood the test of time and it was not Moulin Rouge.
posted by GuyZero at 1:53 PM on February 20, 2020 [10 favorites]

R+J (1996): Worldwide Box Office $147,542,381, 72% Fresh, 6.6 Metacritic, Ebert 2/4 (thumbs down)

Moulin Rouge (2001): Worldwide Box Office $179,200,588, 76% Fresh, 6.6 Metacritic, Ebert 3.5/4 (thumbs up)

On looking at the numbers they're closer that I thought, though I'm with Ebert on this one. The one of the Red Curtain Trilogy I actually like though is Strictly Ballroom, Lurmann's only perfect movie.
posted by bonehead at 2:13 PM on February 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

MetaFilter: So I agree if that's your point.
posted by chavenet at 2:24 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

I thought the headline was a joke. To this old millennial there literally WAS no bigger heartthrob at the time Titanic came out!

I remember being annoyed at this movie and thinking it was only popular because he was in it and all the girls at the time seemed to looooove him. I hated that movie on principle until my stepmom got it on VHS and had us watch it, had me crying at the frozen dead babies and kids.
posted by GoblinHoney at 2:28 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

If by “actually a star,” you mean “was Leonardo DiCaprio an enormous ball of gas using fusion to turn hydrogen into helium and radiating almost unimaginable heat,” then, no.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:32 PM on February 20, 2020 [37 favorites]

Oh, huh. From the Nov. 9, 1997 New York Times Styles Section, "Attack of the 90-foot Teen-Agers":

THIS is a quiz: Gavin, Leonardo and Claire, J. T. T; extra points if you can name all five Spice Girls; extra, extra points if you know Buffy the Vampire Slayer's last name.

If the answers come immediately to mind: Rossdale, the lead singer of Bush; two movie stars, DiCaprio and Danes; Jonathan Taylor Thomas from ''Home Improvement,'' and Emma, Victoria, Mel C, Mel B and Geri, then there is no doubt you are very clued in, or under 17. (If you know that Buffy's last name is Summers, you've been watching too much WB.)

Granted, this is the NYT Styles section which is practically synonymous with cultural cluelessness and/or trolling, but this is a data point.

On the other hand, we also have this from USA Today (Nov. 26, 1997): "DiCaprio rides 'Titanic' wave":

NEW YORK -- "It's time to kick back," says Leonardo DiCaprio, lighting a cigar and taking a break from the hubbub swirling around Titanic.

The 23-year-old star recently returned to the USA from Japan, where he was mobbed at the film's premiere by worshipful fans yelling, "Romeo! Romeo!" (a reference to his performance in William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet.

"Leonardo is the biggest star in Japan," says Titanic director James Cameron. "It was like Beatlemania. It was unbelievable. I was surprised he didn't get his arm ripped off. They tried!"

"It was really weird to me," says DiCaprio between puffs. "All that stuff is really surreal. What people don't get is that you don't know any of these people individually. It's not like I sit down and get to know them. As an individual, you're only touched by the people you meet on a close personal basis."

It's not explicit here, but I think the article is implying that while DiCaprio was Beatle-mania level famous in Japan at the time of the Titanic premiere, he wasn't causing quite the same kind of commotions in the US at the same time.
posted by mhum at 2:38 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Leonardo DiCaprio was famous as hell before titanic this is just yalls weird Mandela Effect fucking with y’all.
posted by nikaspark at 2:46 PM on February 20, 2020 [6 favorites]

This is unbelievably stupid. He was a known quantity prior to R+J. R+J made him a major star, and then Titanic into the biggest star around for a while. But he was for sure a "name" after R+J (while Winslet was famous among people who pay attention but unknown to others prior to Titanic.)
posted by Navelgazer at 2:56 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

The crazy thing is that I remember at the time Gilbert Grape was coming across as more of a Johnny Depp vehicle, with Leo as more of a supporting actor. The trailers depicted it as such, anyway. So people trying to advocate that Gilbert Grape was "proof" he was famous are making me wonder "are people maybe confusing him with Johnny Depp?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:57 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Leonardo DiCaprio was famous as hell before titanic this is just yalls weird Mandela Effect fucking with y’all.

Just think, all that time he spent adapting Berenstein Bears books to the screen, WASTED.
posted by hanov3r at 2:58 PM on February 20, 2020 [8 favorites]

Not wasted, per se. It was only after fighting one of those bears on-screen that he finally landed himself an Oscar.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:05 PM on February 20, 2020 [6 favorites]

Mindless Boomer debate: Was Peter Sellers a big star before or after The Pink Panther?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:30 PM on February 20, 2020 [4 favorites]

EmpressCallipygos: I believe "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" was absolutely marketed and conceived as a Jonny Depp vehicle, but that DiCaprio stole the show.

When "The Quick and the Dead" came out in 1995, all I remember about it was that while it was supposed to be a Sharon Stone movie, all the press I saw centered on this rising kid Leo.

After "Romeo + Juliet" he was an A-Lister. And the only logical way to imagine otherwise is to compare it to the stratospheric fame that came on the heels of a generational thing like "Titanic." Which makes no sense.
posted by Navelgazer at 3:52 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

Mindless Boomer debate: Was Peter Sellers a big star before or after The Pink Panther?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goon_Show
posted by mikelieman at 3:57 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

Wow, mhum, great find with that article. Reading it was like going back in time to middle school.
posted by potrzebie at 4:19 PM on February 20, 2020

Gary Oldman - boat

He was the boat, he just wasn’t credited. It’s a testament to his acting ability that so few people recognized him.

He reportedly spent six weeks floating face down in a pool of water to prepare for that role. Then, to stay in character during the shoot, he insisted on communicating solely via loud foghorn noises. Truly a master of the craft.
posted by dephlogisticated at 4:40 PM on February 20, 2020 [11 favorites]

Melanie Lynskey helpfully settles this.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:37 PM on February 20, 2020 [6 favorites]

I mean, this largely comes down to where you draw the line at for "star", doesn't it? If you think that "star" means a very top performer, one who is ubiquitous and powerful such that their name alone can guarantee box office success, and that there are a dozen or two stars going around at a time, that's a very different definition than if you think "star" means someone who could plausibly be cast as the lead in a movie, someone that most movie goers have heard of, someone who probably can't go to the mall without someone asking for an autograph such that there are a couple hundred stars.

From reviews of the time:

For the leading romantic roles of Jack and Rose, Cameron has chosen two of today's finest young actors. Leonardo DiCaprio (Romeo + Juliet), who has rarely done better work, has shed his cocky image. Instead, he's likable and energetic in this part -- two characteristics vital to establishing Jack as a hero. Meanwhile, Kate Winslet, whose impressive resume includes Sense and Sensibility, Hamlet, and Jude, dons a flawless American accent along with her 1912 garb, and essays an appealing, vulnerable Rose. Billy Zane comes across as the perfect villain -- callous, arrogant, yet displaying true affection for his prized fiancé. - James Berardinelli, ReelViews

It's difficult to recall another break-the-bank epic that has ever been carried so forcefully by its feminine side -- specifically, Kate Winslet's luminous performance as a refined but cash-short free spirit who's betrothed for mama's sake to a life of hell with an odious snob. [...] Leonardo DiCaprio is nearly up to Winslet as the street-smart sketcher, though he's occasionally saddled with tin-eared dialogue (or maybe an atypical tin tongue to deliver them). As Winslet's fiance, Billy Zane contributes a variation on an oily 19th century stage villain, an unsubtle but hardly inappropriate take on a 1912 stuffed shirt 20 years behind even those times. But Winslet aside, the one real casting coup is the screen return of slinky '30s blonde Gloria Stuart (The Old Dark House), she playing Winslet at age 102 in the story's extended modern-day frame. - Mike Clark, USA Today

To me, that sounds like Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were roughly equally star-level. If you think that there are 20 stars, neither of them were; if you think there are hundreds, probably both are.

Or another angle:
Leonardo DiCaprio's salary for Titanic was $2.5 million (he got a lot of money from residuals, but the up front salary is the more important, since that's the guaranteed money, and residuals weren't as highly valued back then; Titanic was one of the movies that started to change that afterwards. And note that Titanic was the highest budget movie in history, so he had room to demand cash.)

Other movie salaries from the same era:
Jim Carrey, The Cable Guy - $20 million
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Batman & Robin - $25 million
Bruce Willis, Last Man Standing - $16 million ($14 million for The Sixth Sense)
Will Smith, Enemy Of The State - $14 million
Keanu Reeves, The Matrix - $10 million
Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump - $10 million (reduced during filming to $5M in exchange for a share of the profits)
Mel Gibson, Lethal Weapon 4 - $30 million
Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich - $20 million
Jack Nicholson was getting $10 million, and Stallone signed a three movie deal at $20 million per in this same time frame.

If those guys are your benchmark for stars, somebody you can hire for 80-90% less money isn't a star.

Will Smith is probably the most interesting comparison; with Fresh Prince and Six Degrees of Separation under his belt, he was probably a type-two star, and got paid $2 million to star in Bad Boys. After that, Independence Day and MIB, his salary was up to $14 million and he was pretty clearly a type-one star. It seems reasonable to me that Leo pre-Titanic was about as much of a star as Will Smith pre-Bad Boys.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 6:01 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

So Cameron couldn't afford to have unknowns cast in the leads, but at the same time he couldn't get too spendy on an already bloated budget by casting A-listers.

It produces the interesting thought experiment of who he would have cast if he had his pick of A-listers. Presuming he wanted to keep the dewy freshness of performers in their early twenties (Winslet and DiCaprio were born in 1975 and 1974, respectively) and he would this eschew big draws like Julia Roberts (b. 1967) and Tom Cruise (b. 1962), I had a look at other performers sharing Winslet and DiCaprio’s birth years and tried to think who else was moderately famous at the time.

Titanic, starring Giovanni Ribisi and Drew Barrymore.

Titanic, starring Christian Bale and Angelina Jolie.

Strains the brain a bit, don’t it?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:01 PM on February 20, 2020

I think it's reasonable to say that Leonardo DiCaprio was a household name after Titanic, much like Kate Winslet, but it's straight-up incorrect to say that they were unknowns. Both were clearly hired because they weren't unknowns.
posted by Merus at 6:07 PM on February 20, 2020

There are two notable and significant shifts to discuss re Leo. The first was when he went from star to big star. The second was when he went from the way he was before to Now That’s What I Call More Muscular Vol. 2 which was around Gangs of NY/Departed
posted by Kemma80 at 6:14 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Folks, here's how I know Leonardo DiCaprio was a star before Titanic.

In 8th grade I was a nerd, and I was friends with a bunch of nerds. We spent most of our lunch periods playing Magic: the Gathering, but I had gotten a subset of them into Illuminati: New World Order, a tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory game where you built a secret power structure involving countries, organizations, and people who were relevant at the time (the game is kind of dated). A typical move from the game might be "Ross Perot uses the Orbital Mind Control Lasers to attempt to control the Bank of England". Anyway, one of the cards, Media Sensation, let you write in the name of any currently famous person. (I put Scotch tape over the write-in space for replayability.) And one of my friends, more out of dyslexia than an attempt at wit, wrote in "Leaardo DiCrapio". I have carried the image in my mind to this day.

My 8th grade friends were not film buffs. They did not know obscure actors. It was the 1996–97 academic year, and Leaardo DiCrapio was a Media Sensation.
posted by aws17576 at 6:44 PM on February 20, 2020 [11 favorites]

I'm a huge fan of Leo's watched most of his movies, including Gilbert Grape and R+J.
Haven't gotten around to watching Titanic, yet. Seems kind of long.
posted by signal at 6:56 PM on February 20, 2020

If those guys are your benchmark for stars, somebody you can hire for 80-90% less money isn't a star.

That doesn't seem particularly useful as a criterion. I've always understood a star as simply being the person or persons who are top-billed or playing the protagonist(s). The superstar--someone who can virtually guarantee that a movie will be successful--is in another class entirely. Put it this way: Superman starred Christopher Reeve, who not only played the title character but whose uncanny charisma and suitability for the part is cited over and over again as the reason for the film's success. Marlon Brando, on the other hand, helped the film get made in the first place, even if his actual on-screen time wasn't much. Brando was a superstar. (Also note that superstardom can be a very evanescent state; Last Man Standing and Batman & Robin flopped.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:05 PM on February 20, 2020

The Great Gatsby (2013) by Baz is a work of genius. Leonardo plays the part of an actor/banker, desperate for affirmation from his his fickle audience, thirsty for attention, grasping for whatever recognition that he can get, even though he has it all. His acting in this piece is his best work.
posted by ovvl at 7:30 PM on February 20, 2020

Honestly the only Luhrmann film I don't ever need to see again is Australia. All the rest of them are very rewatchable for me. Australia I would probably walk out of a party if someone put it on even as background wallpaper. Not because of anything other than it was boring and a long as the entire age of the Universe and then another bit longer. Just my own opinion, yours might be different.

Leo's pre-Titanic movies made him famous enough to get his role in Titanic. It didn't guarantee his role, but I assure you it drew the specific attention of the production team. Same with Kate's movies. They were well chosen for their parts, really.
posted by hippybear at 7:43 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

I often find in situations like this that it's helpful to flip the question on its head and come at it from another angle. So consider this...

Was the Titanic famous before they made a movie about it with Leonardo DiCaprio?
posted by Naberius at 8:13 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Um.... yes it was.
posted by hippybear at 8:16 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

Anyway, one of the cards, Media Sensation, let you write in the name of any currently famous person. (I put Scotch tape over the write-in space for replayability.)

Some here, save that I use the sticky bit of a Post-It note. As well, I have a couple of Media Sensation cards, and every few years when the urge to play INWO arises again, I can date to with a few months when I last played it.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:05 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

Was the Titanic famous before they made a movie about it with Leonardo DiCaprio?
posted by Naberius at 11:13 PM on February 20
[+] [!]


Um.... yes it was.
posted by hippybear at 11:16 PM on February 20
[1 favorite +] [!]

Fifteen years after the movie and thus some eight years ago, the centennial of the sinking rolled around. Given the number of people I saw on social media who were apparently sincere in their “WTF... I thought that was just a movie,” it’s possible it’s not as famous as we think.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:07 PM on February 20, 2020

The one of the Red Curtain Trilogy I actually like though is Strictly Ballroom, Lurmann's the only perfect movie.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:10 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

If by “actually a star,” you mean “was Leonardo DiCaprio an enormous ball of gas using fusion to turn hydrogen into helium and radiating almost unimaginable heat,” then, no.
posted by GenjiandProust at 16:32 on February 20 [umpteen favorites +] [!]

but surely he was a miasma of incandescent plasma
posted by jjray at 9:22 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Now that I actually read the article... I had another less snarky thought. While DiCaprio was certainly known in the English speaking world (we can quibble over what it means to be a star but we can I think agree that he was at least known) at that point in his career but I don't think he was all that well known to the non-English speaking international audiences. After all it was Céline Sciamma's remark about the Titanic stars in her interview that was the instigator of this question. When Titanic came out it was an enormous international hit. I recall being in Egypt in 1997 or 1998 and marvelling at an enormous hand painted billboard for the Titanic along side of a large poster for some Lorenzo Lamas film.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:24 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

When Titanic came out, part of it's hit status was generated by it being 1) the most expensive movie ever produced at the time, and 2) one of the longer films ever to be released as a blockbuster multi-screen release, and 3) pushed back 5 months for release because of the special effects.

All this was sort of floating around in the movie news during the months (years?) leading up to its release and it generated a lot of just plain curiosity about the movie. One of the most expensive, long movies that couldn't be completed on time? This will either be a bomb or a disaster! Gotta see it!

There have probably been entire books written about Cameron's obsessiveness with detail regarding this film and where that led him in his pursuit of his vision. It's a vision that paid off. It's an old-fashioned romance film from the Golden Age of movies in its attitude, and audiences connected with it.

I think I saw it 5 times in the theater during its run (which was one of the most lengthy since the golden age of blockbusters when movies like Star Wars ran for multiple years in theaters). I haven't seen it for ages. Maybe I should rewatch it. Cameron's an effective filmmaker.

(Although I question this whole "5(?) sequels to Avatar all being filmed together 20 years after its release" thing he's doing.)
posted by hippybear at 9:58 PM on February 20, 2020

I'm a Boomer. Titanic first came to my attention not as James Cameron's new movie, but as Leonardo DiCaprio's (having enjoyed his turn in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet). Case closed.

If you kids don't settle down back there, I'm stopping this Intarweb right here and nobody gets ice cream.
posted by flabdablet at 10:17 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Total topic derail but all I can focus on is that isn’t the past tense of gaslight, gaslit? You gaslit me vs you gaslighted me...Gaslighted just sounds wrong. Anyway, I digress. To weigh in, imo Leo was a definitely a movie star before Titanic. If Gilbert Grape didn’t make him famous, he was huge after R&J. I’m sure part of the reason they cast him was because the movie was so expensive and they needed a name to ensure people would turn up to pay the thing off.
posted by Jubey at 10:22 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm on team gaslighted, as it's not about being lit with gas, it's about whether someone did something to gaslight you. It's a different form of word formation which uses the original form and past-tenses that so it's not confused with "then in 1900 they gaslit Main Street in town".
posted by hippybear at 10:31 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

He was a child and teen star, but that was his first role in an adult film as a leading man. It made him a viable romantic lead which was questionable at the time because he wasnt particularly handsome or manly and looked 14 years old*. And at the time most romantic leads were more of the strong masculine classically handsome Billy Zane/ Denzel Washington/ Brad Pitt type. So famous? Absolutely. But not for that kind of role and not so much amongst adults.

* he still kinda does imho.
posted by fshgrl at 11:28 PM on February 20, 2020

that was his first role in an adult film as a leading man

Title role in Romeo and Juliet somehow doesn't count?
posted by flabdablet at 11:30 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

R and J was oriented at teens. I remember all my friends thinking we were too old for it when we saw it. I think we were all still under 20. And he was playing a 15 year old in that movie, wasn't he?
posted by fshgrl at 11:32 PM on February 20, 2020

I remember all my friends thinking we were too old for it. I think we were all still under 20.

Teens are like that.
posted by flabdablet at 11:35 PM on February 20, 2020

That was super oriented at teens.

Wait, WTF?

No, Romeo + Juliet wasn't oriented at teens. It was oriented toward focussing the story on being about teens and about how their minds are. The fact that it had both Romeo and Juliet doing fucking MDMA and then falling in love that was complicated was somehow being targeted at 14 year olds? The movie was aimed at everyone. I was 28 when I saw this movie and I thought it was super effective and saw it at least a couple of times in the theater.
posted by hippybear at 11:37 PM on February 20, 2020 [6 favorites]

" Illuminati: New World Order"... oh man, I just had like a 25 year flashback.
posted by tavella at 11:41 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Robert Anton Wilson is requesting your phone number.
posted by hippybear at 11:41 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yep. We were huge indie movie fans and adored Strictly Ballroom and haaaated R+J. Thought it was trendy, flashy and shallow. Not an uncommon opinion at the time amongst people my age, as I recall. I like it much better now.

And I maintain it was a) very/more popular with teens, the movie won Best Kiss at the MTV music awards not an Oscar and b) not an adult romantic lead role. He played a kid in it. My mom never heard of the guy till Titanic and she watches an above average number of films.

Find me a teen who didnt take MDMA and fall in love with someone they just met in the 90s.
posted by fshgrl at 11:45 PM on February 20, 2020

My personal benchmark for stardom is: "Would this person make Entertainment Tonight's birthday wishes list?"

That is an fantastic metric and I will be using it to supplement my "Has My Mom Heard of Them?" criteria.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:49 PM on February 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

Was the Titanic famous before they made a movie about it with Leonardo DiCaprio?
posted by Naberius at 11:13 PM on February 20
[+] [!]


Um.... yes it was.
posted by hippybear at 11:16 PM on February 20
[1 favorite +] [!]

Not if you go by all of the (admittedly teenaged) people who were fucking furious that my group of friends (late 20's) "spoiled" the movie while in line to see it when we were discussing what we knew about the sinking and why raising the wreckage is impossible.

It probably didn't help that we laughed in (what we thought was) sharing the joke when they screamed "SPOILERS!!!!!!" at us, but it was a genuine reaction!
posted by tzikeh at 6:19 AM on February 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

I was in the theater opening weekend and did hear someone in front of me exclaim "What do you mean most of them die?"
posted by Badgermann at 7:45 AM on February 21, 2020

I loved him in Gilbert Grape, Basketball Diaries, and R+J. By the time Titanic came around (I was in high school) I already was like 'ew he sold out RIP' and basically never watched him in anything again.
posted by greta simone at 9:20 AM on February 21, 2020

He always strikes me as an odd choice for a megastar, on account of his weird crabapple-shaped head. I fantasize about a movie pairing of his and Christina Ricci's heads, though I suppose her vastly better acting would show him up.
posted by sonascope at 11:03 AM on February 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Was the Titanic famous before they made a movie about it with Leonardo DiCaprio?

I guess I know I'm old when I find a question like this astonishing. It's like the whole Makes the Trains Run on Time thing all over again.
posted by bonehead at 11:16 AM on February 21, 2020

Was Romeo and Juliet famous before they made a movie about it with Leonardo DiCaprio?
posted by mazola at 11:36 AM on February 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Let me really blow your mind: it was based on something some guy (maybe?) wrote (possibly?) 425 years ago.
posted by bonehead at 11:54 AM on February 21, 2020

This thread has 100% broken my sarcasm detector.
posted by Etrigan at 12:24 PM on February 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

I remembered a moment from during Titanic-fever (I was around seventeen at the time) when my friend Katy was gushing all over it and said something about how Leo could keep doing anything he wanted but that Kate Winslet should only ever be in this, to keep the role perfectly iconic or some other dumb teenage thing. I had seen Sense and Sensibility a few years earlier and mentioned it, and she was all, "oh fine, if she's alreayd in toerh stuff then whatever."

But the point was that while Katy didn't know Kate Winslet before Titanic, she for sure knew Leonardo DiCaprio.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:36 PM on February 21, 2020

As mentioned up thread, something I distinctly remember was people grousing about titanic being nominated/winning best picture because “it was only popular because of the teen girls going to see it again and again.” I think I saw it in the theater twice (hey, I was in college, and was one of the movie reviewers for the school newspaper, and also, I loved everything about the movie aside from jack and rose), and I wouldn’t bet money on it, but I’m reasonably sure (as any 20+ year old memory can be) that the showings were packed with teenagers.

DiCaprio was a huge star/teen idol, and maybe the misremembering that’s going on is part of the dominant/old culture of the time showing distaste for “kids these days.”
posted by Ghidorah at 4:42 AM on February 22, 2020

Oh god, does this mean we’re about to have a remake of Titanic starring Justin Bieber?

I mean, I get it. I’m making a joke about a guy who was a teen heartthrob five to ten years ago because now I’m the old guy who has no idea who kids are into now. The circle, he quoted annoyingly, is complete.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:45 AM on February 22, 2020

remake of Titanic starring Justin Bieber?

Only if he has a hoser moustache and Anvil does the main theme.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:53 AM on February 22, 2020

He was absolutely a star among Gen Xers after The Basketball Diaries, and Romeo + Juliet expanded his fame. I don't even consider Titanic among his early movies, he was well-established by then.
posted by emd3737 at 9:56 PM on February 22, 2020

He always strikes me as an odd choice for a megastar, on account of his weird crabapple-shaped head.

Crab apples are better than horse chestnuts.
posted by flabdablet at 1:08 AM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

> He was absolutely a star among Gen Xers after The Basketball Diaries, and Romeo + Juliet expanded his fame. I don't even consider Titanic among his early movies, he was well-established by then.

This Gen-Xer absolutely agrees. Between Gilbert Grape and Basketball Diaries and Romeo + Juliet, high-profile actors and directors were publicly praising his professionalism and talent, his androgyny and indie-buzz career led to natural comparisons to Johnny Depp and River Phoenix, and his alleged hard-partying lifestyle and rumors of romantic entanglements with scores of famous actresses put him in the gossip columns every week.

Also, yeah no Romeo + Juliet was not particularly oriented toward just teens. Though, I can imagine how you might have gotten that impression if you were a teenager at the time. The Baz Luhrmann of it all definitely inspired some goofy sneering thinkpieces about "I don't know about this weird flashy nontraditional filmmaking style and the wacky modern anachronisms, is that how we must make Shakespeare relevant to these slacker kids today?"
posted by desuetude at 12:28 PM on February 24, 2020