Twenty-two years before he finally won the Oscar for ‘The Revenant’, a 19-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio was dealing with a strange truth: he was secretly praying to lose.
In Oscar history, 1994 is known as the year Tommy Lee Jones won Best Supporting Actor for ‘The Fugitive‘. But for DiCaprio, who was nominated for his heartbreaking performance as Arnie Grape in ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape‘, losing was not a letdown. It was a relief.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Fear of the Oscar Curse
Looking back at the night that started what people call his Oscar curse, DiCaprio said his main feeling was not ambition. It was pure fear. “I really didn’t want to win,” DiCaprio said in a 1997 interview with i-D magazine. While most young actors dream of giving a tearful speech on stage, DiCaprio saw the award as a danger to his early career.
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He was scared of the Oscar curse. Long before the internet made jokes about his struggle to win, DiCaprio was worried about what people would expect from him. He explained that winning an Academy Award so young would mean the public would want him to be perfect in every role.
“People almost want you to be perfect in everything you do,” he told i-D. “If you’re not, then it’s almost like, ‘OK, get him out of here, he was lucky once and now we’re done with him.’”
For an actor who had just played a teenager with a developmental disability acting next to Johnny Depp, the pressure to follow a win with another great role felt like a nightmare.
He later told Time Out that he did not have a speech ready because, “I didn’t think there was a shot in hell I’d get it. It would have been an absolute catastrophe if I had.”
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Stage Fright
Years later, while promoting ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ in 2014, DiCaprio opened up more about why he felt so much stage fright. He told Deadline that he was not just nervous about his career; he was terrified of simply standing on that stage in front of so many people.
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“My first reaction was being terrified of ever having to go up on stage in front of a billion people,” DiCaprio said, remembering what his publicist told him about the worldwide audience.
The actor, who usually seemed so sure of himself, realized that movie sets felt safe, but live television was different. “It’s not like doing a movie where you get a second or third take. Everyone’s watching every word that you say,” he explained.
How Losing in 1994 Saved Leonardo DiCaprio’s Career
This backstory helps explain his famous 2016 win for ‘The Revenant‘. When he finally won, his speech was not about acting glory; it was about climate change. By then, he was 41 years old and had already been through the craziness of ‘Titanic‘ and many years of being passed over.
Back in 1994, the boy who played the odd and sweet Arnie Grape was just a young guy trying to get through the scariest night of his life from the safety of his seat in the audience.
As it turned out, losing that night was the best thing that could have happened. He dodged what he called a catastrophe. He gave himself room to grow, and over the next twenty years, he proved he was no one-hit wonder.
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