Long before ‘Titanic’ turned him into one of the world’s biggest stars, Leonardo DiCaprio had to face a very strange obstacle that had nothing to do with his acting. One of his talent agents was convinced that his real name would hold him back forever.
The actor was told to adopt a different, more generic stage name, but the suggestion didn’t sit quite well with either the young actor or his father.
Leonardo DiCaprio Almost Became Lenny Williams
During an appearance on the New Heights podcast with Travis and Jason Kelce, Leonardo DiCaprio looked back on one of the earliest – and strangest – moments of his career. After finally signing with a talent agent as a young teenager, he expected advice on auditions and acting.
Instead, he was told his biggest problem was his name. The agent believed “Leonardo DiCaprio” sounded “too ethnic” and warned that casting directors would reject him because of it. Their solution was a complete rebrand.
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“I finally got an agent. They said, ‘Your name is too ethnic,’” DiCaprio recalled. “I go, ‘What do you mean? It’s Leonardo DiCaprio?’ They go, ‘No, too ethnic. They’re never going to hire you. Your new name is Lenny Williams.’”
The actor remembered being completely bewildered by the suggestion. “I said, ‘What is Lenny?’ I was 12,13. I said, ‘What is Lenny Williams?’ ‘We took your middle name, and we made it. Now you’re Lenny.’”
The proposed stage name came from his middle name, Wilhelm, which the agent reworked into a far more stage-worthy surname. Though it was meant to make the young actor more commercially appealing, neither DiCaprio nor his family were convinced.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Father Refused To Change His Name
Any chance of “Lenny Williams” becoming Hollywood’s next rising star disappeared the moment DiCaprio brought home a headshot featuring this new name. His father, George DiCaprio, immediately tore it up and declared that the name change would happen “over my dead body”, ending the conversation before it even started.
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George DiCaprio, who is of Italian and German descent, clearly wouldn’t let Hollywood erase his family’s heritage. And so the plan never took off, and Leonardo DiCaprio kept his real name.
DiCaprio had appeared on the podcast alongside Benicio Del Toro to promote ‘One Battle After Another’. As he recounted the incident, Del Toro also revealed the name he was encouraged to adopt while starting out in Hollywood – “Benny Del”.
Fortunately, DiCaprio ignored the advice. Rather than becoming “Lenny Williams”, he kept the name that would eventually become one of the most recognisable in cinema history, attached to classics like ‘Titanic’, ‘Inception’, ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and more.
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