Precisely seventeen minutes have passed into my interview with actor Leonardo DiCaprio when his voice breaks over a poorly concealed sob.
“It’s been…it’s been twenty-six years,” he chokes out, before clenching a fist in front of his mouth and staring down at the coffee he ordered for this brunch interview.
“It certainly must be difficult,” I agree, busying myself with jotting down the details of his sorrow to sell to the tabloids.
He composes himself. “I’ve spent so long staring at her on TVs, and through windows, just knowing that I was so close yet so far…and I wished I could hold her or just touch her and pretend for a moment she was mine…”
“Interesting,” I say. “I always thought the Oscar statue was a boy.”
“Her name is Elena!” he roars, slamming his hands down on the table. Several patrons turn around to see what the matter is, realize they are sitting in the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, and faint immediately. Luckily, I was well prepared for encountering his holy light, and am wearing heavily tinted sunglasses for protection.
Then his voice chokes up again. “Their names all started with ‘e.’” He looks off over my shoulder, misting eyes piercing into nothingness, or perhaps into some faded dream of what could have been.
I can’t help myself from breathing, “Whose names?” I realize that this must be the most personal conversation he’s had with anyone, and I realize that Leonardo freaking DiCaprio is having a heart-to-heart with me. In this moment, I’ve touched infinity.
“All the other Oscar statues I was nominated for,” he whispers. “All snatched from me a moment too soon.”
Well this was more than I bargained for.
“I’m…sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. I’m a journalist, not a goddamn psychologist.
“Gone,” he croaks. “Lost. Forever.”
The awkward situation is thankfully interrupted by a waitress bringing us our food, and a few minutes after we tuck in, our conversation becomes much lighter.
“I’m taking Elena on my yacht the second she comes home,” he expounds on his spring plans. “I’m thinking a few weeks out on the Caribbean, just the two of us. I think she’d like daily picnics, too, and I’ll build her a summer house in Ibiza …”
There are dinner reservations for two made months in advance, and tickets to expensive operas, and little hats for the statue he’d made out of lace doilies.
With brunch nearly finished and the interview almost complete, I repeat the question that had started us down this strange conversation in the first place.
“Mr. DiCaprio, it’s well-expected that you’ll win the Academy Award this year. But just as you have been nominated four times previously and lost, how will you feel if you lose again?”
He stops showing me how to fold a doily into a doll-sized sun hat and clenches the tablecloth until his knuckles become white. I think he might upturn the table. But then, lips trembling, he rolls back his sleeves to his elbows, revealing tattooed names on his forearms: “Elizabeth,” “Evelyn,” “Edwina,” and “Edie,” all outlined in hearts and underscored with the words “Never Forgotten.”
And at last, he burst into tears.
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