Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the most distinguished actors in Hollywood. He has carefully crafted his career to be in some of the best films of the past two decades. He has worked with acclaimed directors such as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron, some of whom he has worked with multiple times.
DiCaprio’s Oscar snubs were a meme that was equal parts hilarious and sad. The actor was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor four times before winning on his fifth attempt for The Revenant. However, one of the actor’s biggest snubs was in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, and the actor lost out on the nomination for one admirable reason.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Tryst With Oscar Glory
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the few stars who has carefully chosen his scripts and directors. While the actor may have gotten global recognition with the billion-dollar blockbuster Titanic, the actor has made it a point to explore and expand his range both before and after its success.
DiCaprio’s first contact with the Oscars was for his role as Arnie in the Johnny Depp starrer What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards along with veterans such as Pete Postlethwaite, John Malkovich, Ralph Fiennes, and Tommy Lee Jones, who won the award that year. DiCaprio was only twenty at the time.
Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated next for his second collaboration with director Martin Scorsese in The Aviator. He played the eccentric aviation magnate and filmmaker Howard Hughes. The actor was snubbed again, despite being one of the best performances of the year. He was next nominated for the action film Blood Diamond. The year also saw him collaborate with Martin Scorsese again in The Departed.
DiCaprio tried his luck again with Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, where he played stock broker and con man Jordan Belfort. The actor lost out to Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyer’s Club. DiCaprio finally won the coveted Oscar for Alejandro G Inarritu’s The Revenant. The actor underwent many hardships during the film, including having to eat a raw bison liver on camera, despite the actor being vegetarian.
Why Was Leonardo DiCaprio Snubbed For The Departed?
In 2006, Leonardo DiCaprio starred in two films. One was the political action film Blood Diamond, where DiCaprio played Danny Archer, a mercenary who smuggles diamonds in Sierra Leone. The film was set during the civil war in Leone and spoke about the harsh conditions of the locals during the wars and how foreign companies profited off of the war and their labor. DiCaprio was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.
He also starred in Martin Scorsese’s gangster drama The Departed along with an ensemble cast of Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, and Alec Baldwin. A remake of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs, the film followed the story of two moles within a gang and the police, and the clash between them. DiCaprio portrayed Billy Costigan, an undercover cop. The film finally won Martin Scorsese a Best Director Oscar as well as Best Picture, Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Both films were distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures. However, the studio did not want to favor DiCaprio in the leading man category over his other co-stars, which consisted of big names such as Nicholson, Damon, and Wahlberg. While the studio tried to position him for a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, he refused to campaign against his co-stars in the category. Ultimately, Mark Wahlberg was nominated for the category.
While DiCaprio did get nominated for a relatively better category, many believe that his performance in The Departed was superior and would have gotten the actor his Oscar ten years earlier. He brought in a perpetual panic to the character of Billy Costigan who has to choose between loyalties and has to run away from his past. The actor ultimately secured what was due to him, and was nominated again for his role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Source: Variety
