Quotes from Leonardo DiCaprio

I took some time off after 'Titanic' because I needed to let the dust settle and recharge my battery. I felt, 'OK, you've been given a tremendous opportunity; what are you going to do with it? Now your name can finance movies that you do want to do.'

My career should adapt to me. Fame is like a VIP pass wherever you want to go.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

School, I never truly got the knack of. I could never focus on things I didn't want to learn.

I was a bit of a loudmouth, and I was in an environment where the elements aligned to have kids smack the hell outta me once in a while.

Obviously people don't want other people to tell them how to think or what to believe, or to tell them what's right politically and what's wrong.

I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe mankind has looked at climate change in the same way, as if it were a fiction.

I didn't know what types of movies I wanted to do. I want to do things that are different. I want to take my time with each role.

I never thought I could travel unless I had a wife or someone to share it with. You don't necessarily need that, but I am the type of person that wants to share a lot.

Being dubbed as a hunk sort of annoys me. It gives me a yucky feeling.

I saw all the moral decay you could, beginning at 2 years old. But I also got to see how the other half lived.

I am completely open to doing a romantic comedy, but I will never do something just for the sake of doing a specific genre or because it's the time or place to do a different type of movie. I think that would be a huge mistake.

Hopefully I've gotten better as an actor as the years have gone on, but the type of work I want to do has never changed.

I've never tried to reach a certain demographic of an audience or try to say, 'OK, now I'm going to do this type of film to transition myself into more adult roles.' Or a romantic hero. Or whatever it may be - you know what I mean?

I have to say that whatever decisions I make, I really do think that movie making is a director's medium. They are the people that ultimately shape the film, and a director can take great material and turn it into garbage if they are not capable of making a good movie.

A man's legacy is determined by how the story ends.

I was always the kid in school who tried to get attention, not necessarily the class clown, but I'd do little unexpected performances.

I believe, you know, as history unfolds, certain films will disappear, and certain ones will stand the test of time. And you never know which ones those are. And you've just got to go for the opportunities of films you think might be memorable.

At some point in your career, someone is going to tell you, "This stove is hot. Do not touch this stove." And the weird thing is, you'll want to touch it. But resist that urge, man.

I get unhappy doing things that I'm not passionate about. Because I feel like I'm squandering this incredible gift I've been given to finance films. As soon as my name alone was enough to make this happen, I vowed to myself that I was going to work with directors who were changing cinema, doing something important, you know?

I've gotten to go to far-off places in the world, have very unique, isolated, intense experiences for four or five months at a time, and then, kind of like a dream, those things disappear. You may see those people again, but it's never, ever going to be as intense as it was for that time period.

My parents, who were split up, were so good at keeping my environment strong and keeping everything around me not focused on the fact that we were poor. They got me culture. They took me to museums. They showed art to me. They read to me. And my mother drove two hours a day to take me to University Elementary School.

I went to a concert once when I was a little kid and ran up onstage, started dancing, started saying anything that came to my head. I was like a little vaudevillian.

When I started acting, I didn't think of it as a career. I always thought Hollywood was this magical world where a fairy came down and said, 'Come live with the Munchkins; you are now one of us.' I didn't understand the concept of it as a career. I thought I would save up enough money to go to college.