Leonardo DiCaprio (right, front) reacts as the Best Actor award is announced at 86th Acaademy Awards. (Photo/CRIonline)
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio first stepped on the red carpet of Academy Awards in 1994. He was nominated for for Best Supporting Actor with his performance as a young boy with development disability in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. The award that year went to Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.
Ever since then, for more than 20 years, the actor has worked hard for the golden statue, one of the highest recognitions awarded to excellence in acting. He has come close many times, and failed each time.
In 2005, DiCaprio was nominated for Best Actor for The Aviator. The award went to Jamie Foxx in Ray. Two years later, he was nominated again for Blood Diamond. The award went to Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland. The Titanic actor was nominated for Best Actor once more at the 86th Academy Awards for his role in The Wolf of Wall Street. And once more, the honor went to somebody else (Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club).
This year, the actor, who has brushed shoulders with the Oscars four times, is nominated again as Best Actor for his performance in director Alejandro G. Inarritu's The Revenant, which is leading the Oscar race with 12 nominations.
The Academy Award has a history of recognizing actors who undergo extreme physical change in order to fit a particular role, such as Matthew McConaughey did for Dallas Buyers Club (in which he shed off tremendous amount of weight to play an AIDS patient) and actress Charlize Theron in Monster (where she won Best Actress).
The Revenant was filmed in extreme weather conditions in the remotes of Canada and Argentina, and DiCaprio participated in some very physically demanding scenes, including devouring down a liver from a real bison. If the Academy were to carry on the same train of thought, DiCaprio may have high hopes.
