Leonardo Dicaprio

 

- Michelle Davies

He shot to fame in Romeo + Juliet and is still one of the world’s most successful actors, yet his real passion today lies in campaigning to save the planet

Had one Hollywood agent got their way, the 2016 Academy Award for Best Actor would have gone to… Lenny Williams. This was the name ten-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio was advised to adopt in 1985 when he was on the cusp of becoming an actor. ‘They felt my name was too ethnic and I wouldn’t get as many jobs,’ he later revealed. One Oscar, three Golden Globes, a Bafta and a staggering 90 further acting awards later, it’s safe to say the agent’s judgement was a little wide of the mark. And yet these days, DiCaprio, now 42, wants to be known as an environmentalist. The fate of the planet is his grand passion. His Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which he set up in 1998, aged just 24, has distributed a staggering £47.4m in grants to projects that protect vulnerable wildlife from extinction and restore balance to threatened ecosystems and communities, and he is a respected speaker on global warming, regularly engaging with world leaders to take action to save the planet. It’s a huge shift in direction for a child actor, who seemed destined to follow the classic Hollywood career.