Leonardo DiCaprio has just started going into promo mode for his new movie, “The Revenant.” And he went all in by telling the story of how a shark nearly chomped off his head, as well as two other near-death tales.
DiCaprio did an interview with Wired magazine where he talked about portraying Hugh Glass, a real-life 1820s fur trapper who got mauled by a bear. Leo also told the real-life tale of how he was nearly beheaded by a great white shark.
“A great white jumped into my cage when I was diving in South Africa, Leo said. “Half its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me.”
Leo continues telling his incredible story.
“They leave the tops open (of the shark cage) and you have a regulator line running to the surface. Then they chum the water with tuna. A wave came and the tuna sort of flipped up into the air. A shark jumped up and grabbed the tuna, and half its body landed inside the cage with me. I sort of fell down to the bottom and tried to lie flat. The great white took about five or six snaps an arm’s length away from my head. The guys there said that has never happened in the 30 years they’d been doing it.”
“I have it on video, DiCaprio remarked. “It’s insane.”
But the legendary actor was not done telling near-death stories.
“Then there was this Delta Airlines flight to Russia. I was in business class, and an engine blew up in front of my eyes. I was sitting there looking out at the wing, and the entire wing exploded in a fireball. I was the only one looking out at the moment this giant turbine exploded like a comet. It was crazy.”
It sounds like a goddamn movie.
“They shut all the engines off for a couple of minutes, so you’re just sitting there gliding with absolutely no sound, and nobody in the plane was saying anything. It was a surreal experience. They started the engines back up, and we did an emergency landing at JFK.”
But DiCaprio wasn’t done because how could we leave out the time Leonardo almost died in a skydiving accident.
“It was a tandem dive. We pulled the first chute. That was knotted up… He pulled the second, and that was knotted up too. He just kept shaking it and shaking it in midair, as all my friends were, you know, what felt like half a mile above me, and I’m plummeting toward earth. [Laughs.] And he finally unravels it in midair.”
DiCaprio said he was warned by the man that he was diving with that he could have broken his legs because of how fast they fell from the sky. But Leo tells how his legs survived, “We did, like, this barrel roll. We got bruised up, but no broken legs.”
DiCaprio was asked “Do you still skydive?” And he responded, “No. No, I do not.”
“My friends have named me the person they least want to do extreme adventures with, because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster, DiCaprio told Wired. “If a cat has nine lives, I think I’ve used a few.”
It sounds that Leo is gearing up his propaganda machine to win himself an Oscar. Last month, at a Q&A session following a screening of “The Revenant,” DiCaprio told the media, “It was the most difficult film, I think, that any of us have ever done.” The Hollywood star reiterated on how extreme the harsh conditions of filming in the Canadian wilderness in the Wired interview, “Every single day of this movie was difficult. It was the most difficult film I’ve ever done. You’ll see, when you see the film—the endurance that we all had to have is very much up on the screen.”
When asked what was the worst part was DiCaprio replied, “The hardest thing for me was getting in and out of frozen rivers. Because I had elk skin on and a bear fur that weighed about 100 pounds when it got wet. And every day it was a challenge not to get hypothermia.”
DiCaprio was filming a movie in 40 below zero conditions and in icy rivers. Give the man his fucking Oscar already.