Born in the town that would later make him famous, DiCaprio came into the world on November 11, 1974, in Hollywood, CA. The son of a German immigrant mother and an underground comic book artist father who separated shortly after his birth, DiCaprio was raised by both of his parents, who encouraged his early interest in acting.

In high school,Leonardo DiCaprio acted in his first real play and began doing commercials, educational films, and the occasional stint on the Saturday morning show The New Lassie. In 1990, after securing his first full-time agent at the age of 15, DiCaprio landed a role as a teenage alcoholic on the daytime drama Santa Barbara.

He was signed at the age of fourteen, and struggled to break into the movie industry through obscure commercials and educational films such as "How to Deal With a Parent Who Takes Drugs" and "Mickey's Safety Club." DiCaprio took part in over thirty commercials in all, and eventually procured guest appearances on such television shows as "Lassie", "The Outsiders", "Roseanne", and "Parenthood."

The move from 'star' to 'superstar' came when Leonardo DiCaprio played Jack Dawson in Titanic (1997). The highest grossing movie ever, it tied with Ben-Hur (1959) for receiving the most Academy Awards. Though DiCaprio himself was not nominated for an Oscar, over the course of the next few years he would become a household name worldwide, synonymous first with labels like 'teen heartthrob' or sex symbol with his dewy cheeked and saccharined faced looks

The film garnered 14 Oscar nominations, winning 11, including Best Picture and Best Director. DiCaprio's much discussed exclusion from the nominations did nothing to hurt his popularity, and somewhat ironically, he next chose to parody his own celebrity with an appearance in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) as a badly behaved movie star.