Scripted Stars: Exploring the Most Iconic Roles of Leonardo DiCaprio

Every now and again, you get to see an actor whose usual roles go for a complete 180°. A typecast villain becomes the hero, or vice versa—and what’s more, they perform the role beautifully. But oh so rarely, you’ll get the celebrated actors whose roles are as diverse as can be: from tragic underdog romance to downright sadistic villainy, for example. As you watch any of the films that feature Leonardo DiCaprio, this is the kind of experience you get.

Movies that paint DiCaprio as a hedonist, conman, or dream-venturing thought thief have used his versatility to ensnare audiences in each new world he’s a part of—the frontier, the plantation, or even Wall Street.

Reading the scripts shown below will give you a clearer idea of what this star remakes himself into, using each story as the backdrop for every convincing transformation.

Scripts from this Article

The Wolf Of Wall Street

Don’t Look Up

Romeo + Juliet

Django Unchained

The Revenant

Inception

The Departed

Catch Me If You Can

The Great Gatsby

Gangs Of New York

Killers of the Flower Moon

Titanic

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Screenplay by: Terence Winter

An iconic role in DiCaprio’s reel, Jordan Belfort is a portrait of the Robert McKee devolution plot in action. As a biopic and black comedy, The Wolf of Wall Street holds even more weight for audiences as they watch Belfort become more and more entrenched in debauchery and crime. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, this activity earns him the title “The Wolf of Wall Street,” making him a predatory scumbag that you can’t help but keep watching—much like a train wreck.

Don’t Look Up (2021)

Screenplay by: Adam McKay and David Sirota

In a bout of cheeky, end-of-the-world political satire, the spooky part of Don’t Look Up comes from its similarity to the pseudo-political landscape of America today.

Campaigns and anti-campaigns enter a full sprint to debate a life-ending comet’s approach to Earth, and this comet becomes the ticking clock in the background as audiences witness the all-too-familiar diversion tactics of American politicians—even with astronomers like Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) delivering dire warnings before they fall victim to the mass media tendency to downplay, muckrake, and commercialize.

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Screenplay by: Craig Pearce and Baz Luhrmann

Catapulting DiCaprio as a teenage heartthrob in the late ’90s, this modern retelling of the classic Shakespearean tragedy portrays him as the young heir to the Montague business empire.

Like his original character, DiCaprio’s Romeo is just as mercurial and fickle, now passionately enamored with the daughter of his family’s corporate rivals. In Verona Beach, Romeo and Juliet (Claire Danes) find themselves ignoring the family feud, shootouts, and animosity to pursue a tryst and secret marriage, which ends exactly as well as secret teenage marriages tend to—maybe a bit worse.

Django Unchained (2012)

Screenplay by: Quentin Tarantino

One of the stories on this list with DiCaprio in a supporting role, Django Unchained is still one of the most extreme examples of his acting ability.

While Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz star as a freed slave and bounty hunter on a rescue mission, the main antagonist is a wildly cruel and charismatic demon of a plantation owner, Calvin Candie (DiCaprio). It’s his sickening sadism and high-society façade that help present DiCaprio’s character as a depraved, devious, and downright deadly foe to trifle with, making the confrontations worth watching to the end in this bloody anti-Western.

Read More: Inspiring Writing Lessons from the Greats: Quentin Tarantino

The Revenant (2015)

Screenplay by: Mark L. Smith

The story of Hugh Glass, an 1820s frontiersman, is something of a legend dating as far back as the early 20th century. The Revenant showcases those events as Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) treks through the rugged, wintry North American frontier after a grizzly attack in which his hunting companions leave him for dead.

The aftermath is a gritty, gray struggle for Glass, who—in his return from the jaws of death—learns that the world is harsher and bigger than one man’s hopes for revenge.

Inception (2010)

Screenplay by: Christopher Nolan

Dom Cobb’s (DiCaprio) main talent isn’t something you pick up overnight. He dives into someone else’s dreams and steals ideas or thoughts from their subconscious—delving so deep that his theft remains undetected.

Task-oriented and ambitious, Cobb’s abilities have caused him a lot of heartache, so this quiet, tortured mental B&E artist soon leaps at the opportunity to turn his skill on its head. Only by diving into the deepest parts of the mind will Cobb be able to give someone an idea without their knowledge—and possibly come home to everything he thought he lost.

The Departed (2006)

Screenplay by: William Monahan

An undercover cop (DiCaprio) and an Irish mobster (Matt Damon) both act as moles in each other’s respective fields—inciting interest from the police and the mob when each learns there’s a rat on either side of the fence. With increased suspense, violence, and truth leaking out, it becomes harder and harder to protect themselves from suspicion and worse as each rat susses out more of the goings-on in organized crime and the Boston PD. This makes it all the more compelling to see Damon and DiCaprio in this head-to-head “rat race” to uncover the truth.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Screenplay by: Jeff Nathanson, Frank Abagnale Jr., and Stan Redding

Young, confident, and seemingly capable of anything, Frank Abagnale, Jr. (DiCaprio) handles forgery and fraud like the best of con artists: the definition of “fake it ’til you make it.”

Based on the semi-autobiographical book of the same name, Abagnale’s account of successful forgeries is widely debated for its truthfulness. But in taking on this role, DiCaprio embodies the spirit of this man’s charisma and apparent expertise in fraud with such believability—and such chemistry with his FBI counterpart Carl (Tom Hanks)—that it’s fascinating whether it winds up being true or not.

Read More: Unleash Your Inner Explorer: Films That Capture the Spirit of Adventure

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Screenplay by: Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce

Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, this tale generates intrigue in the high-society living of 1920s New York City and in the lovelorn millionaire Jay Gatsby (DiCaprio) whose bay neighbor happens to be Daisy (Carey Mulligan), the “one who got away.”

The heartbreak, socialite depravity, and even the suave “hollowness” DiCaprio describes himself seeing in Gatsby—those are the things that push this modern tragedy forward, step by step, and DiCaprio does his due diligence in portraying that masterfully.

Gangs of New York (2002)

Screenplay by: Jay Cocks, Kenneth Lonergan, and Steven Zaillian

This Scorsese film demonstrates the contention between Protestants and Irish Catholics in the 19th century as Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) comes under the wing of his father’s killer (Daniel Day-Lewis) in the hopes of exacting his revenge. The conflicts of an intricate and corrupt gang-ridden society seep into Amsterdam and the rest of the people he surrounds himself with as an all-out war soon mounts in response to his actions. 

Read More: Violence and Voice: Exploring the Brutal Storytelling of Martin Scorsese Films

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Screenplay by: Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese, and David Grann

Another Scorsese flick in the mix, Killers of the Flower Moon showcases a despicable scheme to kill off the Osage Nation who discover oil on their land. At the heart of this scheme are William King Hale (Robert De Niro) and his two nephews, Byron (Scott Shepherd) and WWI vet Ernest (DiCaprio).

Between idiotic and conspiring lies the nature of DiCaprio’s masterful performance as Ernest Burkhart, clearly without qualm and lacking a will of his own as he carries out murderous orders brought on by his uncle in a greedy plot to steal the rights to Osage oil money.

Titanic (1997)

Screenplay by: James Cameron

If Romeo put Leonardo DiCaprio on a poster in every teenage room across America, Titanic was the movie where he stole every woman’s hearts in the same way. Placing this fictional, ill-fated romance on the real-life disaster ship of the same name, Titanic watches rich-girl Rose (Kate Winslet) and starving artist type Jack (DiCaprio) fall for each other despite Rose’s engagement to another, much more wealthy man (Billy Zane).

In an epic love story doomed on its maiden voyage, Jack’s optimistic devotion paints him as the paragon of romantic leads with a life cut too short. It’s this portrayal by DiCaprio that makes this timeless love story feel so gut-wrenching, even after hearing Celine Dion’s hit theme for the fortieth time.

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Good actors have skill and talent, but great actors often can see through the writing to bring a character to life in multiple dimensions. With DiCaprio’s natural screen chemistry and his instinct for internal workings, he understands his characters in each script intimately. An acting career like his can astound and surprise the masses—from psychological thrillers to crime dramas, from epic romances to cutting dark comedy—all thanks to how he interprets and depicts the true nature of each role he takes.