There is a parallel universe where the star of Titanic is named “Lenny Williams.” As luck would have it, Leonardo DiCaprio remained Leonardo DiCaprio instead.
He told the story on Travis and Jason Kelce’s New Heights podcast. “I finally got an agent. They said, ‘Your name is too ethnic.’ I go, ‘What do you mean? It’s Leonardo DiCaprio?’ They go, ‘No, too ethnic.’” The agent said that if DiCaprio didn’t change his name, “They’ll never hire you.”
The agent’s response was imaginative: turn Leonardo’s middle name, Wilhelm, into “Williams,” and tack on a “Lenny” in front of it. Lenny Williams was ready for Hollywood. But Leo’s father, George DiCaprio, of Italian and German descent, wasn’t having it. “My saw his photo, ripped it up, and he said, ‘Over my dead body,’” DiCaprio said.
He was joined on the podcast by his One Battle After Another co-star Benicio Del Toro, who received the same “advice” early in his career. “They wanted to call me Benny Dell,” said the The Usual Suspects actor, now 58. At that point Jason Kelce joked, “This podcast would not be the same with Lenny Williams and Benny Dell.”
DiCaprio recalled other episodes from his early days as well. “There were these acting agents that that would line you up like cattle,” he said. “It was like yes, yes, no—and they look at me, no, and then a yes, yes, yes.” Today, he thinks it had to do with his look at the time. “I was a breakdancer. I’d breakdance for like money on the streets sometimes, with the step haircut.”
“I remember saying to my dad, this is horrible,” DiCaprio added. “I went back and they did it again.”
In the end, getting a few doors closed in his face didn’t keep him from becoming one of the world’s most respected actors. As Jason Kelce pointed out: “This is a holy shit for those agents. Those agents are probably now like, ‘What the fuck were we thinking?’”
DiCaprio’s career started early. He landed his first TV commercial, for Matchbox toy cars, at age 14. In the early 1990s, his roles in the sitcom Growing Pains and the film This Boy’s Life made him a rising star. Looks like he didn’t need to become Lenny Williams after all.
Originally published in Vanity Fair Italy.
