‘I have always been nervous of big-budget studio films,’ said Leo. ‘The hype and the marketing frighten me. Overall, though, I was glad to be part of Titanic. As an actor I look at movies as a relevant art form, like a painting or sculpture. A hundred years from now, people will still be watching that movie.’
It’s just as well his attitude changed. In 2012, the movie was revamped for the digital age and released in a stunning new 3D format – just in time for the centenary of the ship’s disaster. Once more, Leo’s fresh-faced Jack Dawson will light up the world’s cinema screens, sparking a new wave of ‘Leo-Mania’ and potentially introducing the heartthrob to thousands of new fans.
Leonardo DiCaprio might be the most powerful movie star in Hollywood right now, but it could have been so different. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the stubbornness of a German mother nearly 70 years ago, there might not have been a Leonardo DiCaprio at all…
Life for Leo really began not on the mean streets of Los Angeles where, famously, he was raised, but back in semi-rural Germany during the Second World War. For an episode then was to have a massive bearing on whether the world would ever be blessed with his talents at all.
Helene Indenbirken was a young mother whose daughter Irmelin was just two when she suffered a broken leg and had to be admitted to hospital. The local infirmary near their home in Oer-Erkenschwick, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, was understaffed and over-stretched. As little Irmelin lay in bed supposedly recuperating, as the nurses believed, no one took the time to notice that she was actually, silently, wasting away.
As the wards became flooded with more refugees and war-wounded, the nurses on duty had less time to deal with the apparently non-life-threatening cases. Only Helene, who’d arrived in Germany as a Russian immigrant called Yelena Smirnova, recognised something was gravely wrong with her infant child. Seeing that resources were stretched to breaking point and realising if something wasn’t done quickly then her daughter could die, Helene took it upon herself to diagnose and administer the care Irmelin so desperately needed.
What should have been a routine recuperation turned into an agonising ordeal for Helene as Irmelin developed infection after infection and spent a staggering two-and-a-half years in hospital, fighting for her life. Emaciated and malnourished, her stomach became distended and at times, Helene feared she would not make it. But, thanks to her dedication and determination, the youngster gradually recovered and eventually was strong enough to leave hospital while the war raged on.
When Helene’s sole concern was her daughter’s life she could never have believed that the outcome of those crucial first few months in hospital would have had such a bearing on the family’s fortunes but it is something Leonardo has never failed to appreciate.
Speaking of his mother’s battle for life, he said: ‘She ended up contracting five or six major illnesses and stayed for two-and-a-half, three years [in hospital]. My grandmother basically came every day and nursed her back to health because the nurses didn’t have time; they basically left her for dead. When you see a picture of my mother, it’s heartbreaking. It brings tears to my eyes, knowing what she’s been through in her life. I have a picture of her – her first photograph, with this tiny little skirt – and she’s emaciated, with a belly like this,’ he adds, gesturing to indicate the size of a beach ball. ‘She had a belly full of worms.’
Incredibly, given her tender years, that episode wasn’t the first brush with death Irmelin had experienced. Born in an air-raid shelter, she might not have survived beyond her first few breaths had the aim of Allied fighter pilots been off. That innate sense of survival may have fostered in Irmelin a desire to make the most of the chance her mother had given her. When she was 11, her family left Oer-Erkenschwick and moved to the United States to start a new life in New York. She enrolled at City College and in 1963 it was there that she met and fell in love with an enigmatic young beatnik called George DiCaprio. Born in 1943, George was an American hippie whose ancestors hailed from Naples, in Italy, and Bavaria in southern Germany. He had long, straggly hair and a bohemian air about him.
George’s grandfather had made the perilous journey from Italy to America in a wooden boat and the young DiCaprio was to inherit much of that pioneering free spirit. George was emerging as a leading light in the alternative literature scene and would go on to count Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist William S. Burroughs as friends, as well as fellow cartoonist Robert Crumb and the writer Hubert Selby Jr. He was rooming with Sterling Morrison, the guitarist from The Velvet Underground and had already published a comic of his own – Baloney Moccasins – with Laurie Anderson, a former girlfriend of his who was also a performance artist.
Despite their initial differences in personality – George was gregarious and outgoing, while Irmelin was more reserved, yet strong-willed – the pair hit it off immediately and discovered a shared a sense of adventure along with a desire to see the world. Two years later they were married and spent the remainder of the sixties immersing themselves in the underground counter-culture. It appeared to be the natural progression of things when Irmelin fell pregnant in early 1974, but cracks were already beginning to show in their relationship. Believing West was best for a young family, they moved to Los Angeles ‘in hopes of the great western ideals of a better life’, as Leo told Vanity Fair in 2004. Landing in Hollywood, they scraped by with enough to pay the bills but their choices were limited and so they ended up in one of Hollywood’s poorest districts. The couple had chosen Hollywood thinking it was the exciting centre of Los Angeles. Instead, their son recalled in an LA Times interview, ‘they wound up by Le Sex Shoppe and the Waterbed Hotel’. George earned what little cash they had by installing asbestos – still a popular component in heat insulation, fireproof roofing and flooring in the sixties and seventies. In his spare time he distributed comics and beatnik books to local bookstores and arranged public readings for the likes of Burroughs and Ginsberg. Meanwhile, Irmelin found work as a legal secretary.
As if to perhaps convince themselves that their wandering spirit could not be curtailed by diapers and feeding schedules George and Irmelin travelled to Italy on what has been described as a second honeymoon. Visiting Florence, they stopped by the Uffizi Gallery, where they took the opportunity to appreciate the Renaissance art. As Irmelin paused to admire a painting by Leonardo da Vinci she felt a strong kick inside her. Was her baby expressing its first opinion of the arts? Irmelin certainly thought so. She decided there and then that if the child were a boy she’d name him after the Italian genius. George was delighted – his father’s middle name was Leon and he loved the artistic element of the moniker.
Sadly, however, the holiday ultimately failed to save the marriage and by the time Irmelin gave birth to baby Leonardo, she and George were drifting apart. It has been well reported that Leo’s parents separated before he was one, but the reality seems to be that they were apart before then, certainly on an emotional level at least.
Leonardo himself said: ‘My parents were divorced before I was even born, but that’s never bothered me. As far as my family is concerned, my parents were the rebellious ones – they’re people who have done everything and have nothing to prove.’
Little Leo was born on 11 November 1974 and was ‘the cutest kid,’ according to doting grandmother Helene, who at that point remained in New York (in a quarter popular with German immigrants). Three weeks after he was born she flew to California to see the new arrival for herself. She recalled: ‘Irmelin brought him to the airport in her arms. He had the roundest little face.’
Leonardo’s parents might still have been living as man and wife at this stage but it was not to last. George felt stifled by domesticity and before his son’s first birthday, had made plans to leave. As