4) Leonardo DiCaprio – What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
The fact that Leonardo DiCaprio’s first role was as the severely mentally disabled Arnie Grape, brother of Johnny Depp’s Gilbert, in Lasse Halström’s 1993 film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape never fails to be mentioned in any article that looks at actors’ outstanding early roles. But it needs be to be discussed every time, and for this there are three main reasons. The first is that DiCaprio’s performance is so phenomenal that it deserves to be recognised this often. Secondly, it proved beyond all shadows of all doubts that this was a man to watch from now on. And thirdly, it was the beginning of DiCaprio’s now famous inability to win Oscars.
In the film, Arnie – to everyone’s surprise – is about to turn 18. Yet his myriad of disabilities and problems make him look, sound and act little more than nine years old. And it is exactly this that makes DiCaprio’s portrayal of the character so extraordinary. When asked to guess at how old DiCaprio was when he played Arnie, the majority of people – assuming that he had to have had at least some maturity in order to play such a role – guess at approximately 13. DiCaprio was 19. It is all the actor’s work that renders him looking and behaving so young.
Nor is it just this innocent, inept playfulness that makes DiCaprio’s performance so extraordinary. He is often as difficult as he is enchanting to watch. The moment in which his awkward, uncoordinated thoughts begin to register the concept of his mother’s death, or the awful scene in which Gilbert – whose devotion to his brother is (usually) unwavering – discovers that Arnie had not understood that he was to get himself out of the bath are as horrifying as the scenes at his 18th birthday party or his playing hide and seek in plain view are endearing. Also, not once does DiCaprio overstep that ominous mark between accuracy/reality and mockery; as extreme as Arnie’s disabilities often appear, DiCaprio keeps his tics and behaviours within consistent limits that allows his portrayal to remain sensitive.
The quiet success of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape does not depend solely on DiCaprio’s Arnie, as the movie itself is a gently sad yet gently hopeful reflection of what are the actual lives of many people, and the chemistry between Gilbert and Arnie is both adorable and heart-breaking. But arguably it is Arnie and not Gilbert that is at the heart of this movie, and it is no wonder that it was this performance that earned DiCaprio his first Oscar nomination in 1994, for best actor in a supporting role.
Of course, however, DiCaprio lost (to Gene Hackman in Unforgiven). He has since received another three Academy Award nominations for best actor in a leading role, and lost out on all of those too. Admittedly, there have been good reasons for his just missing the finishing line in each case. When he lost out for The Aviator in 2005 it was to Jamie Foxx in Ray. In 2007 DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond performance was just overtaken by Forest Whittaker’s in The Last King of Scotland. In 2014, Matthew McConaughey’s win for Dallas Buyers Club (up against DiCaprio’s The Wolf of Wall Street) was perhaps always quite certain, given the gravity of the material and McConaughey’s shocking dedication to becoming the sort of actor no-one had ever expected (more on him later).
However, there are vague but growing whispers in Hollywood of the world of film needing to introduce new categories of awards, to accommodate the ever-growing variety of skills that are being developed and used in filmmaking (such as motion capture etc). If this is the case, then let’s have one for ‘Retrospective Shameful Oversight,’ and just use all of the countless views of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape as the votes.