Before his days playing the whimsically romantic Jack Dawson in Titanic or the infamously ruthless Calvin Candie in Django Unchained, a babyfaced Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for his first Academy Award at just 19-years-old for his role as Arnie, a mentally impaired youth in the independent drama What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
DiCaprio has been nominated for six Academy Awards in total, thanks to his most recent gig in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s thriller, The Revenant. Sadly, for Leo and his fans, he has failed to take the coveted statuette home.
What makes this year different? DiCaprio won his first ever Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in The Revenant. This role also earned him various regional Film Critics Association Awards, something that has not happened consistently for any of his other successful works, along with the Golden Globe award for Best Actor.
Will this finally be Leo’s year? Here’s a look at DiCaprio’s Best Actor competitors:
Bryan Cranston: Trumbo
Cranston has dominated television awards lately, taking home six Emmy Awards for his performance in the television series Breaking Bad, with a total of twelve Emmy nominations to his name, along with other honors. This year, Trumbo was nominated for the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Matt Damon: The Martian
The only major awards that The Martian have taken home thus far are Golden Globes for Best Leading Actor and Best Motion Picture — both under the Musical or Comedy category. Damon’s prime came in 1997 and 1998 for his film Good Will Hunting, for which he won the Academy Award – but it was an award for writing, which he shares with Ben Affleck.
Michael Fassbender: Steve Jobs
Fassbender recently experienced great success with his film 12 Years a Slave, which cultivated numerous award nominations. Unfortunately for him, the film did not earn him any major wins. Like DiCaprio and Damon, Fassbender has yet to take home an Academy Award.
Eddie Redmayne: The Danish Girl
Redmayne’s breakout role came in 2014 with his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne took home an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award, all for Best Leading Actor. The Danish Girl was nominated for the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award this year.
At both this year’s Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards, DiCaprio competed in the same category as Redmayne, Fassbender, and Cranston, and he ultimately took home the hardware.
Looking back on DiCaprio’s career, it seems as if he’s truly done it all. He has portrayed a greedy con artist and a passionate loverboy, a money-hungry stockbroker and an obsessive-compulsive inventor, a criminally insane mental patient and an extravagant 1920s businessman.
Still, according to DiCaprio himself, portraying Hugh Glass in The Revenant was the most challenging role he has faced.
The Revenant required cast members to shoot in extremely harsh, below-freezing weather conditions. DiCaprio burrowed inside of a horse carcass and devoured raw bison liver while creating his miraculously resilient, revenge-seeking character.
Watch the 88th Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 28 on ABC, live at 4 p.m. to see if 2016 belongs to Leo. If it’s not his year, stay tuned for his role in Martin Scorsese’s The Devil in the White City, in which he’ll play serial killer H. H. Holmes, known for his brutal murder castle. Holmes’ castle was equipped with soundproof torture chambers, bedrooms, and bank vaults, where he left his victims to suffocate, or die of hunger and thirst. That’s entertainment!