Just Like Scorsese, Leo DiCaprio’s Time Will Come

Leonardo DiCaprio is one of my all time favorite actors, and he’s easily one of the best actors of his generation, but unfortunately he has no Oscars to show for any of his big screen performances. 

After four acting nominations he is still without a Golden Statue, and after last night’s Oscar awards, social media and the Internet went crazy with heartbreak for the star. Leo is a great actor, and sometimes great performances aren’t fully appreciated until after the actor is gone. 

In DiCaprio’s case I doubt that is the problem.

Every time he’s been nominated he’s gone up against another actor who’s performance is just so out of this world amazing that Leo barely missed his moment to get the prize that symbolizes the pinnacle of success in the acting business.

DiCaprio will get his; he’s just been unfortunate not to get one yet. 

In the four movies DiCaprio has been nominated for an Oscar, (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, Wolf of Wall Street) he was either the product of young age or just extremely poor timing.

In Gilbert Grape he was just 19 years old and finding himself in an expansive Hollywood landscape already filled with legendary stars like Tom Hanks, Robert Deniro, Denzel Washington and Al Pacino. 

He lost the best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1994 to Tommy Lee Jones who won for The Fugitive, which was an amazing performance by Jones. Although the young DiCaprio came up short, everyone knew he had a great career ahead of him. 

DiCaprio would not receive another Oscar nomination until 11 years later with his portrayal as Howard Hughes in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator.

Unfortunately for DiCaprio he was up against some great competition that year including an out of this world performance by eventual Best Actor winner Jamie Foxx in Ray.

There is no shame in losing out to Jamie Foxx for Ray because he was sensational. But there would be more nominations for Dicaprio to come.

In his most puzzling nomination to date, his third, DiCaprio was nominated for Blood Diamond and his diamond smuggling character Danny Archer.

Don’t get me wrong it was an enjoyable movie, but this was what the academy thought was worth nominating him for? Blood Diamond? 

Finally came his most recent nomination for Wolf of Wall Street and the 3-hour extravaganza portrayal of Jordan Belfort.

This was a performance worth nominating and after I watched this movie I was sure this was it for DiCaprio, this movie would be his crowning achievement. 

In college football the highest achievement a player can get is the Heisman trophy award, and every season the eventual winner of the award can point back to what they refer to as his “Heisman Moment.” That’s the moment where he does something so remarkable on the field that he basically wraps up the trophy. 

Well DiCaprio’s Heisman moment came in Wolf of Wall street where he popped some expired Quaaludes and for 15 minutes of cinema he crawled on the floor from the entrance of a country club to his Lamborghini to drive himself home under the influence.

I have never been more riveted or entertained by anything so simple in a movie as that part of Wolf of Wall Street; I was in awe.

The Academy apparently didn’t feel the same way and Matthew McConaughey took him the Oscar over Leo. It’s hard to argue against McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club because it was pretty special.

But again, Leo was left Oscarless. But for all his performances I can’t help but feel the Academy dropped the ball on his other movies. 

Here are some of the amazing movies that DiCaprio and the academy must have missed apparently. My personal favorite from all of DiCaprio’s movies is easily Catch Me If You Can directed by Steven Spielberg.

The Frank Abignail character and the chemistry DiCaprio had the entire movie with co-star Tom Hanks was the most enjoyable of all of his roles for me and was definitely a better performance than either of his in The Aviator or Blood Diamond.

But with Catch Me If You Can, no nomination. He was great in Shutter Island, Gangs of New York, Django Unchained and the movie I was sure he would get a nomination for was The Departed.

I have never been a huge fan of The Departed personally, but I don’t have to love a movie to love an actor’s performance.

DiCaprio was amazing and he played the undercover detective role in that movie as well as anyone could have played any role period. For him to not get nominated at least for that film was more than just an oversight to me but such is life.

The interesting thing about that movie, well rather, the sad thing about that movie is while DiCaprio wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, Martin Scorsese won his first academy award for best director.

Think about what I just said, the first time Martin Scorsese won an Oscar for best director it was in 2007 and it was for THAT movie.

Please spare me all the talk about that movie being a classic and an all-time great because it’s not. Good movie sure, worthy of Scorsese’s first Oscar?

Absolutely not. The man directed Casino, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, New York New York, The Color of Money and for Christ sake the man directed Goodfellas. And when the Academy finally gives him the award, he gets it for The Departed, probably his 10^th best movie. 

This should prove as some solace to DiCaprio and his fans all over the world. The academy doesn’t get it right most of the time in my opinion in either their nominations or their winners. Although I can easily justify all 4 occasions DiCaprio did not win the Oscar he was nominated for, the movies that he received no nominations for at all are unspeakable. 

Regardless if he ever gets his Oscar or not, he’s already an all-time great in my book.

The Oscars are not an exact science and all DiCaprio can do is keep giving us great performances and just bide his time until the academy finally recognizes what we have known for over a decade now, Leonardo DiCaprio is on of the best of his generation, and no Oscar award will change that.