Leonardo DiCaprio’s changing looks at 50 – from Titanic hunk to celeb fling that ‘convinced him to ditch the dad bod’
HE was just 16 years old when he first shot to fame – and we’ve been watching Leonardo DiCaprio grow up on our screens ever since.
The Oscar-winning actor, who turns 50 today, has been in countless movies, amassed a personal fortune of £230million and won a dizzying collection of awards.
Thanks to his Hollywood handsome looks, Leo has also dated some of the world’s most beautiful women.
The current girl in his life is Italian supermodel Vittoria Ceretti, who at 26 is almost half his age. And, unbelievably, she is one of the oldest women he has ever dated.
As he celebrates the big 5-0, we look at how Leo has changed over the years…
Leo’s first role was in 1991, as homeless teen Luke Brower in sitcom Growing Pains – in which he looked adorable.
In 1992, Leo was handpicked by Robert De Niro from a shortlist of 400 young actors to co-star with him in This Boy’s Life.
It became his first movie to gain him recognition.
The following year, Leo played the developmentally disabled brother of Johnny Depp‘s character in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
The role earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor at just 19 years old, proving he wasn’t just a pretty face.
Leo’s good looks then bagged him the lead in Romeo + Juliet with Clare Danes in 1996.
The modern take on Shakespeare’s famous play helped establish him as a Hollywood hunk, with fans swooning over his boyband-style floppy blonde hair (and his convincingly sweet devotion to Claire Danes’ Juliet).
But it was Titanic that catapulted him to a different level of fame, as he took on the role of Jack Dawson opposite Kate Winslet’s Rose, in 1997.
James Cameron’s blockbuster became the highest-grossing film ever at the time, eventually earning more than $2.1 billion at the box office and it won 11 Academy Awards – the most for any film.
Teenage girls and young women became so obsessed with Leo and his wind-swept locks that the phenomenon was dubbed “Leo-mania”.
And in 2000, Leo admitted to Time magazine: “I have no connection with me during that whole Titanic phenomenon and what my face became around the world.
“I’ll never reach that state of popularity again, and I don’t expect to.
“It’s not something I’m going to try to achieve either.”
His reputation was soon attracting some of the most beautiful women in the world, including supermodel Gisele Bundchen – who he dated on and off from 1999 until 2005.
He would show off his toned body in any film he could, including in The Beach in 2000.
In 2002, Leo starred in Catch Me If You Can, sporting a more grown-up look with slicked back hair.
The critically-acclaimed film was based on Frank Abagnale Jr.’s semi-autobiographical book, in which he claims that prior to his 19th birthday, he successfully performed cons worth millions of dollars by posing as a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia doctor, and a Louisiana parish prosecutor.
That same year, he changed it up again and went for long, wild tussles in Gangs of New York.
In 2010, Leo starred in Inception.
It won four Oscars, and grossed over $837 million worldwide, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2010.
Leo was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his 2013 role in The Wolf of Wall Street – ditching his famous blonde hair for a brunette look.
Leo is an active celebrity in the climate change movement, and is the UN Messenger of Peace.
He spoke at the Climate Change Summit at the United Nations in New York in 2014 – debuting a bushy beard and long hair, which was tied in a man-bun.
He also often charters a multi-million dollar superyacht whenever he travels.
And he continued to show off what some dubbed his ‘Viking-era’ look as he enjoyed time on a boat in Miami.
It was later revealed the look was for his movie, The Revenant – in which he played 19th century frontiersman Hugh Glass, who is mauled by a bear and left for dead.
He explained he and his co-stars were often mistaken for drifters by other homeless people while filming in the Rockies.
“When we came into town, there was a lot of like, homeless people that would recognise us as their friends and offer us beer and things like that and we’d have conversations with them,” Leo told Ellen DeGeneres.
“But a lot of the times, we were very unrecognisable to most of the people we knew!”
Leo finally won the Oscar for Best Actor in 2015, for the film – and got rid of the bushy beard.
Taking some well-earned time off from work, he spent his 2020 winter holidays in St Barts with his then-girlfriend Camila Morrone – and became the unexpected face of the ‘dad bod’ movement.
Showing off his rounder frame in swim shorts, it was a far cry from the washboard abs he displayed in Titanic, but many hailed him for ‘owning’ the more normal figure.
By 2023, a source told Radar that Leo was determined to shed the extra pounds as his fling with supermodel Gigi Hadid heated up.
The source claimed he didn’t “want another summer where he’s laughed at for his paunchy waistline”.
He certainly appears to have slimmed down since, even if his romance with Gigi didn’t last, and was most recently seen on holiday with Vittoria in Cannes.
Maybe he’s trying to keep up with her in the gym?