Could 2016 be Leonardo DiCaprio’s year?

LEONARDO DiCaprio has been snubbed in the past at the Oscars but is a hot favourite to win this year. So how would he feel if he walks home empty-handed yet again?

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2016 is shaping up to be Leonardo DiCaprio’s year. He took home the Best Actor award for The Revenant at the Golden Globes on the weekend and this morning woke up to the news he’s also tipped for Oscar triumph.

This marks his sixth Academy Award’s nomination and according to Hollywood insiders, Dicaprio is the favourite in this year’s Oscar race.

You could say, he certainly earned his money for what he put himself through on The Revenant — a biographical western, revenge thriller and survival tale set in 1823 in which he suffers a brutal bear attack, ingests raw buffalo liver and jumps into frozen rivers to escape attacks from Native Americans.

“This was the hardest film I’ve ever had to do being out in nature for so long. And it’s about a man who gets screwed over and goes to attack the dude who screwed up his life (Tom Hardy) so it was also spiritual in a lot of ways too,” he says.

“I’ve been in a lot of extreme situations in my life, whether it be scuba diving or skydiving but after seeing this movie you could certainly never compare the struggle of what it would be like to live out in the wilderness that these men endured,” he said.

“I’ve been in near death experiences but nothing like this. At the end of the day I got to go back to a hotel room and I know I would not have been able to endure what these men did out there.” He smiles. “But that was real buffalo I ate, I will say that.”

Dicaprio’s dating life is always a subject of fascination, with him seeming to exclusively date Victoria Secret’s models. Just some of his previous girlfriends include models Kirsten Zang, Gisele Bündchen, Bar Refaeli, Erin Heatherton, Toni Garrn, as well as actress Blake Lively. His relationship with Sports Illustrated model Kelly Rohrbach, which began last year, ended earlier this month.

Unsurprisingly, he dodges the question as to whether there is currently anyone special in his life, but he offers, “I would only be with someone who has an environmental agenda or some sort of understanding of environmentalism. I mean, I couldn’t be with someone who didn’t believe in climate change, for example.”

Dicaprio is an avid environmentalist and donates millions to various causes. He drives a Tesla, has solar panels installed at his home, and created the 2007 documentary The 11th Hour.

He might offer rigid and well-rehearsed answers about his romantic life, but when it comes to the love he has for his parents, his face literally lights up. “I have a wonderful family and friends and I’m enjoying life,” he smiles.

Dicaprio is the only child of a German-born secretary and his father, an underground comic artist.

“My dad has been so incredibly influential not only in my career but as a person,” he said. “Some of my greatest education was sitting down listening to him because he is one of the most well read and knowledgeable people I’ve ever met. When I was miserable about going back to school at the end of every summer, we’d go to downtown LA to a wishing well and we had that ritual for 10 years.”

And what’s the best advice his dad gave him? “He always said to me that no matter what you do, try to lead an interesting life and try to find a way to wake up every morning and be happy to put your pants on. I can’t say that I am 100 per cent there but those are my ambitions,” he said. “If there is anything that I am very proud of, it’s not this grand illusion, but that I have a lot of great people around me.”

Leonardo DiCaprio at the Climate Summit at United Nations Headquarters in 2014. Picture: Reuters/Mike Segar

When it comes to his mother, he says she “is like a fine wine in the sense that she becomes more blatantly honest as she gets older”. He laughs.

“And my God, as she is going into retirement she is absolutely, unbelievably, relentlessly honest in every scenario,” he laughs. “It’s becoming a badge of courage for her, some sort of pride for her to be able to tell people exactly what the hell she thinks. And I have to tell you that it puts me into a lot of situations where I have to explain afterwards what she truly means.” He grins proudly.

“It’s amazing, it’s entertaining and it’s fantastic, but yeah sometimes I need to quell her honesty,” he says. “But I aspire to be like that one day. It’s inevitable, it’s in our DNA. It came from our grandmother, the grand master of honesty.”

This will be Dicaprio’s sixth Oscar nomination. How will he feel if he walks home empty-handed again?

“Listen, I can’t complain about anything. If I heard myself say I wished for this or that, it would be nauseating. I have been so incredibly fortunate in my life,” he says. “Not just in my career but for everything in my life. It’s all good.”