Every Leonardo DiCaprio Movie, Ranked
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Don’t look now, but Leonardo DiCaprio season is once again upon us, and we're not talking about his yachting escapades. This weekend, Killers of the Flower Moon—which marks the actor's seventh collaboration with director Martin Scorsese—hits theaters. Flower Moon tasks the now-48-year-old actor with embodying real-life historical figure Ernest Burkhart, who was part of a scheme to marry and kill Osage women in 1920s Oklahoma, gunning to inherit their wealth.
If you walk into Killers of the Flower Moon expecting another Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood-esque, easily-memed, loud DiCaprio character, look somewhere else. Like Flower Moon itself, DiCaprio's latest turn is admirably—and fittingly—restrained. Slow-burning until it isn't. His performance, if you had any doubt, has already made him a shoo-in for his eighth Academy Award nomination. The actor has only taken home the trophy for his tussle with Cocaine Bear's great-great-great grandfather in The Revenant, so he may very well be due for another win.
In the meantime? Well, since DiCaprio doesn't appear on the big screen every day (or even ever year!), Flower Moon is an occasion to rank all of his movies, from worst to best. Cue the Jay Gatsby cheers! GIF.
Don’s Plum (2001)
After Titanic turned Leo into the biggest box-office star on the planet, one of his former pals saw an irresistibly juicy opportunity to cash in. Back in 1995, two years before DiCaprio would become the King of the World, a wannabe director named R.D. Robb shot this embarrassingly amateurish black-and-white cheapie about a bunch of baby-faced bros (including Tobey Maguire) misogynistically yukking it up in LA after-dark. Needless to say, the post-Titanic Leo didn’t want it to see the light of day—and not just because he picks his nose and eats his own boogers on screen. The star sued Robb, claiming he appeared in the film as a favor and never expected it to be released. The suit was eventually settled with a clause prohibiting Don’s Plum from ever being shown in North America. But as someone who’s suffered through its 89 minutes of torture, trust me, you’re not missing anything. - Chris Nashawaty
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Total Eclipse (1995)
It’s hard to beat boogers, but by god, Total Eclipse does it. Think of it, in our great canon of Leo films here, as the warmup for Romeo + Juliet. It’s not Shakespeare, per se, but Total Eclipse is an erotic historical drama where a young DiCaprio plays the poet Arthur Rimbaud. Close enough! Give or take a couple hundred years. Total Eclipse is a tonal mess, made worse by the story itself—which depicts the affair fellow French poet Paul Verlaine has with the 17-year-old Rimbaud. Better off leaving this one in the history books. - Brady Langmann
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Critters 3 (1991)
To be fair, Leo was just a floppy-haired teenager when this low-rent shlockfest landed on the straight-to-video shelves at your local Blockbuster. Also, it’s hardly the worst creature feature to piggyback on the success of Gremlins (especially if you have some edibles handy). Still, the third chapter in the killer-fuzzball “Critters Cinematic Universe” isn’t exactly a highlight on DiCaprio’s CV. And while it would certainly be a hot take to say that if you squinted just a little at DiCaprio’s performance in his movie debut you could see the promising future that laid ahead, it would also be a big, fat lie. Its 0% Rotten Tomatoes score feels about right. - CN
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Celebrity (1998)
Woody Allen’s caustic tale of Hollywood excess may star Kenneth Branagh as the writer/director’s on-screen proxy, but this 1998 comedy is most notable for DiCaprio’s Brandon Darrow, a spoiled and volatile young actor who’s one of the many outlandish entertainment-industry characters who floats into the orbit of Branagh’s journalist. Whether laying waste to a hotel room or abusing his girlfriend (Gretchen Mol), DiCaprio is the embodiment of narcissistic young stardom, and what makes his performance work is not only his burgeoning—and blistering—charisma, but also his own budding party-boy reputation, which sells Darrow as a wholly convincing, autocritical caricature. It’s a small part, but even in a project filled with older A-listers, DiCaprio shines. - Nick Schager
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Marvin’s Room (1996)
Sure, Leo gets a boost from *checks IMDB* Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, and Roberto De Niro, but Marvin’s Room, at times, feels written partly as a showcase for DiCaprio’s range. Playing Hank, a troubled teen living in a mental institution, we see Leo go from 0 to 100. Then from 100 back to 0. Then back up to 100, as he goes from seeming like a kind kid who loves to tell stories, to an arsonist screaming at anyone who crosses him. Of course, we’d see much, much more of this kind of impressive back-and-forth over DiCaprio’s career, but the early days felt especially thrilling. - BL
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The Basketball Diaries (1995)
He’d been a teen dreamboat on Growing Pains and an Oscar nominee for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape before his 21st birthday, and Leo was determined to keep showing range. So he chose what may be the ultimate ‘90s indie project: a film adaptation of punk poet Jim Carroll’s memoir of teenage drug addiction, prostitution, and high school basketball in New York City. Music fans got to see how some of the “People Who Died” died, and everyone else got to see that baby face get hooked on heroin. A smart play for credibility right before he dove into the high-profile matinee idol parts. We’d rank this higher if he hadn’t been just a little bit upstaged by Mark Wahlberg, who we were just beginning to notice could really act. - Dave Holmes
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J. Edgar (2011)
Considering the talent involved, this botched prestige picture about the infamous FBI battle-ax, J. Edgar Hoover, should have been so much better. Or, at least a lot less boring. Director Clint Eastwood’s biggest sin here (apart from his soporific narrative) is turning Leo into a distracting waxworks ghoul buried under so much god-awful old-age make-up that it feels like a biopic of Jiminy Glick instead of Hoover. Despite the bulldog jowls, DiCaprio does the best he can with one arm tied behind his back. But even he’s not a miracle worker. - CN
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The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)
When The Man in the Iron Mask debuted in theaters on a March weekend in 1998, it was the second biggest movie at the box office, landing behind a slightly-better-known DiCaprio film: Titanic. A hilariously inaccurate mashup of The d'Artagnan Romances, The Man in the Iron Mask has the look and feel of a Disney Channel Original movie with Leo playing dual roles as both the hero and the villain. One could likely attribute most of the film’s financial success to spillover from the dawning of the DiCaprio era. Leo is giving it his all, as he’ll become known for, but the performance feels more Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus than anything else. -MM
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Body of Lies (2008)
There’s a part of me that’ll always feel like the Leo we saw in Body of Lies is prime Leo. You know him well: Action Hero Leo. (Also seen in Inception, Blood Diamond, and The Departed.) Action Hero Leo sits at tables, sipping espresso inquisitively, as he plots his next move. Action Hero Leo speaks many languages and knows many people. Action Hero Leo has recently discovered a large Al-Saleem safe house and training cell here in Amman! Oh shit. No one outsmarts Action Hero Leo. - BL
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The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Not too far out from his career-making role in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, DiCaprio starred in the Sharon Stone-led western, The Quick and the Dead. None of those words make too much sense together, but that’s half the point. The enigma fits pretty well with the overall gist of the film. Though the movie itself might have been a bomb, it’s become a beloved cult classic and features DiCaprio in a charming, if not a bit campy, depiction of “The Kid,” a gangly would-be gunfighter… if he didn’t meet such a tragic end. Oh, fun fact: Sony wasn’t sure about DiCaprio, so Sharon Stone paid his salary. Thank you for that, Sharon. - Justin Kirkland
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The Beach (2000)
Still hot off the blockbuster success of Titanic, young DiCaprio starred in this Danny Boyle cult classic as Richard, an American backpacker shipping off to Thailand in search of “something more beautiful, something more exciting, and something more dangerous.” With a treasure map from a local lunatic in hand, Richard and his pals set sail for a secret island utopia, but they soon learn that nirvana isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. DiCaprio’s trademark “freak out” skills were first honed in The Beach’s notoriously off-the-wall third act, when Richard, like the locals before him, descends into pure sociopathic madness. It’s all lurid, laughable, and characteristically Boyle, but DiCaprio gave it his all, slicing through the stylized noise to craft a parable about how nothing gold can stay. -Adrienne Westenfeld
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Don't Look Up (2021)
DiCaprio leads the star-studded cast of this Adam McKay comedy as Dr. Randall Mindy, a nebbishy astronomer swept into a whirlwind of deception and disillusionment when a planet-killing comet sets a collision course for Earth. Though the film is ostensibly a comedy, DiCaprio finds tender tones within the story, turning in a tragicomic performance as a good man led astray by doomsday temptation. It's a more muted performance than we usually see from the actor, but don't worry—he still finds time for a classic Leo Freakout when he loses his cool on cable news anchors played by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry. - Adrienne Westenfeld
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Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Hard to blame a kid for overcrying in a movie about teens who tragically fuck up the scheduling of an otherwise great prank on their parents, which results in both of their deaths—especially when cast opposite the most talented crier of her generation, Claire Danes. But if he’d given us just a little less on “I defy you, stars!” this Baz Luhrman-directed extravaganza could have swapped spots with The Great Gatsby. Don’t watch that without first watching this one. The sweaty, molly-fueled ballroom scene in this flick walked so the one in The Great Gatsby could run. -Kelly Stout
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Shutter Island (2010)
In Scorsese’s 2010 gripping psychological thriller, DiCaprio plays Edward “Teddy” Daniels, a U.S. Marshal brought to a creepy, remote psychiatric facility on an island in order to investigate the case of a missing patient with his new partner Cuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). Of course, it becomes clear that that isn’t really the case. In a film with one of the greatest twist endings of all time, Leo offers a layered performance in the complex role of a paranoid man who’s greatest mystery to solve is his own mind. - Lauren Kranc
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The Great Gatsby (2013)
I suppose you could say this about several of DiCaprio’s roles, but Jay Gatsby feels like a character he was tailor-made to play. Despite the paparazzi’s best efforts, it feels like Leo’s life is full of mystery yet to be surfaced. Dressed to the nines. A slick ‘do. A whole lot of insecurity brewing beneath the surface. It’s no surprise Leo nailed this one. -Ben Boskovich
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This Boy’s Life (1993)
Premiering eight months before his Oscar-nominated turn in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, DiCaprio’s breakout big-screen role came as the real-life Toby Wolff, whose memoir about childhood suffering and domestic strife is the basis for Michael Caton-Jones’ drama. As the young Wolff, DiCaprio goes toe-to-toe with Robert De Niro’s physically and verbally abusive Dwight, who moves in with Wolff and his mother (Ellen Barkin) and promptly turns their home into a war zone. Exuding a determined fierceness that he wears like a suit of armor, designed to protect him from the slings and arrows (and wallops) of De Niro’s nasty father figure, DiCaprio proved that he was tailor-made for the spotlight, exhibiting the intensity, range and depth of emotion that he’d further develop in later years. - NS
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What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
This is where audiences and critics first really took note of the actor who would in short order become one of his generation’s bona fide greats. It’s DiCaprio’s star-is-born moment—not to mention one that would be recognized by the Academy with Leo’s first Oscar nomination. As Arnie, the sweet, mentally-challenged younger brother of Johnny Depp’s going-nowhere-fast Gilbert, DiCaprio is devastating and affecting in equal measure without hitting any of the false notes that so many other young actors would have succumbed to. It’s a magical conjuring act of Method intensity, heart-tugging empathy, and technical precision. Yes, Depp was ostensibly the above-the-title attraction here. But it’s DiCaprio who had your attention when you walked out of theater. - CN
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Inception (2010)
It’s a dream in a dream in a dream (in a dream!), and it’s a damn fine outing from DiCaprio. Leading an ensemble cast, DiCaprio navigates Christopher Nolan’s mind bending thriller as Dom Cobb, a man who performs mental heists by breaking into people’s dreams and stealing information from their subconscious. He and co-star Elliot Page share a particularly electric chemistry as the two dive deeper into the mental void together, addressing Dom’s own trauma as his subconscious leaks into the minds of others. It’s the DiCaprio version of an action film, but damn if it isn’t a good one. (Also, the top fully fell down.) - JK
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Blood Diamond (2006)
There is a famous story of two Hollywood directors bumping into each other on a remote sand dune in the Sahara on their separate shoots some 65 years ago. The demand for tales of Africa haven’t lessened in the decades since. (In fact, the year Blood Diamond released, it stood alongside two other noteworthy features shot in Uganda and Morocco, respectively: Last King of Scotland and Babel.) With a lesser lead, Edward Zwick’s epic would have remained just a treasure hunt, lost among the other films from the continent that tried. But with DiCaprio as Danny Archer, a diamond smuggler with neither a country nor a moral compass, it became a (then) career highlight performance. The film is desperate for a redemption narrative—DiCaprio refuses it. Instead, he plays Archer as the scum he is. This also works, powerfully, against the actor’s own physical form. He refuses to let you like him—which is, of course, why we love him. —Madison Vain
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Gangs of New York (2002)
Having achieved superstardom courtesy of Titanic, DiCaprio shrewdly opted to partner with some of American cinema’s most illustrious auteurs—none more regularly than Martin Scorsese, beginning with the director’s long-in-the-making historical epic about the mid-1880s Protestant-Catholic clashes for control of Manhattan. As Amsterdam Vallon, a young man seeking revenge for his father’s murder against Daniel-Day-Lewis’ Bill the Butcher, DiCaprio holds the center of a sprawling, violent saga about the social and religious battles that helped define the future of New York City and, by extension, the country. DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz handle their romantic duties with aplomb, but it’s the actor’s scenes opposite a towering Day-Lewis that truly boast a ferocity to match the brutality of Scorsese’s set pieces. - NS
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The Revenant (2015)
Perhaps best known as the film in which Leo gets mauled and shredded to ribbons by a giant grizzly bear, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s stylish existential frontier adventure is like Jeremiah Johnson-gets-dragged-through-hell. As a rugged 19th century hunter, DiCaprio is certainly committed to the brutal physicality of the role, it’s easily the most punishing assignment he’s ever taken on. But as gorgeous as the film is, it can feel a bit like a slow-burning slog at times—a wallow in grim masochism—as Glass claws to survive the frozen West warmed only by the red-hot fire of hatred and vengeance that burns within him. Maybe DiCaprio saw it as his dirt-under-the-fingernails penance for the glitzy jazz and cocktails of The Great Gatsby. At least it finally gave Leo his best actor Oscar. - CN
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Django Unchained (2012)
Having already thrived under the stewardship of Spielberg, Scorsese, Cameron, Nolan, Luhrmann, Boyle, Eastwood, and Mendes, DiCaprio provided a unique scene-stealing performance for yet another auteur—Quentin Tarantino—in Django Unchained. DiCaprio’s Calvin J. Candie is a 19th-century southern plantation owner of the vilest sort, and his ownership of Kerry Washington’s Broomhilda makes him the prime target of Jamie Foxx’s vengeful freed slave. With slicked back hair, a devilishly pointed goatee, and a shit-eating smirk that belies his cold, ruthless sociopathy, Candie is an over-the-top upper-cruster with low morals and even lower, darker instincts, and he serves as a captivatingly detestable counterweight to Foxx’s righteous avenger. It’s thrilling confirmation that, leading man he may be, DiCaprio is expertly suited for villainy. - NS
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The Aviator (2004)
For his second go-round with Scorsese, DiCaprio took on the part of famed airline magnate, filmmaker and recluse Howard Hughes in the lavish biopic The Aviator. At once a daring pioneer and an unstable eccentric, DiCaprio’s Hughes is another in a long line of troubled Scorsese protagonists striving for greatness while battling self-destructive impulses, and the actor brings a larger-than-life magnetism to the historical figure, whose ambitions were as outsized as his love of women was unquenchable and his hang-ups were ultimately crippling. Radiating first outsized swagger and, then, manic insanity, DiCaprio captures the grandness of Hughes’ personality and life. Confidently commanding in every one of Scorsese’s evocative close-ups, it’s arguably his most underrated performance to date. - NS
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Revolutionary Road (2008)
People tend to overlook Revolutionary Road: probably because it's DiCaprio a performance so dark and so raw, it can be difficult to watch. But his portrayal of Frank Wheeler, a one-time free spirit whose individuality is slowly broken by suburban Connecticut life, is among his best work. Paired alongside Kate Winslet, the two give wrenching performances as a couple struggling to maintain their individuality. The push and pull of a life perfected serves as the film’s antagonist, gently ripping the two apart. - JK
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Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
As Ernest Burkhart, this particular DiCaprio variant is slimy, snake-like, greedy, and pretty dim—though, and this is important—not so dense that he's oblivious to his sins, flip as he is about them. Like The Departed's Billy Costigan, Burkhart allows Leo to wear multiple faces, and show off how fluidly he can rotate them. With Burkhart's wife, Mollie (Lily Gladstone), he is doting yet insincere; under interrogation from Bureau of Investigation agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons), he is a drunk, lying, cheating stick of dynamite; trading barbs with his uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro), Burkhart is an insolent child, sticking out his ass for a good ol' spanking. (Yes, reader, De Niro whacking DiCaprio with a paddle is a scene in Flower Moon.) Disappearing into a role is one of the oldest cliches in film criticism, sure, but in Flower Moon, DiCaprio truly vanishes.— BL
In theaters
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Titanic (1997)
Once more, for the people in the back: there was room for Jack on that goddamn door! Though who can say what his career trajectory would have been without that devastating death. Titanic is pure, unadulterated DiCaprio. Given how big and technically groundbreaking the film was, it took two absolutely charming leads to make this film feel human. Leo did just that. Nothing more; nothing less. It’s human to the core. And that’s exactly why Jack’s death still hits so hard more than two decades later. We want to see him live. Not many young actors of his age or at the time could have grabbed our hearts like that. And I will say, part of what puts this so high up on this list is the fact that Leo didn’t just overcome the massive baggage that came from Titanic—instead, he continued to defy the expectations he set in 1997. - MM
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The Departed (2006)
2006. Man, what a year. DiCaprio did much of the lifting in his other high profile outing that year—the previously discussed Blood Diamond, above, which is perhaps why he got the Best Actor nod from the Academy there—but his best work actually came via this gritty ensemble of bad cops and good baddies. Playing Billy Costigan, a state officer who infiltrates the underworld, he brings an animalistic vulnerability to the screen that, in truth, the role didn’t need to still be enjoyed. (With costars in the form of Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, and Mark Wahlberg, no one had to do a heck of a lot of work.) We think of Martin Scorsese and DiCaprio as one of the great, inevitable team-ups in modern cinema now, and here in their third pairing, is when they truly found their creative groove. - MV
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Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Titanic is the way we will always remember Leonardo DiCaprio, but Catch Me If You Can is more likely the way he wishes we would. This came five years after Titanic, and in that interim Leo made some of his worst movies (see: the back end of this list). Then comes Catch Me If You Can, where Leo leans into the charm and fascination with the sly wink of a con man. It’s like he knows that we know that he knows who and what he is—but here, Leo’s sleight of hand is right there on the surface. This is all an act, a long con. Do we know the real Leo or do we just think we know him? It’s a mystery that will surround the rest of his career. In a lot of ways, this performance could parallel that of what comes next on this list in Wolf of Wall Street—where Leo uses his charisma to deceive us, to show us that there’s more to someone who puts on a pilot’s uniform, or that the suit and the smile does not make the businessman. It's a performance so fun and so layered that it doesn't even have to be an actual true story. - MM
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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
I cannot, myself, imagine screaming at the top of my lungs so relentlessly for hours on end. Alas, Leo, veins near-burst, brings enough energy for a whole cast to the role, and then some. Aside from the shouting, the drugs, the cockiness, and the debauchery, DiCaprio’s exploration of Belfort’s character arch is masterful. It’s yet another role where DiCaprio weaponizes his charm to deceive the audience—as the unreliable narrator, trying to convince us Belfort’s not that bad of a guy. His salesmanship (almost) has you rooting for Belfort to prevail, all the while begging you to laugh at him, not with him. Just don’t watch this one if your doctor is already prescribing you blood pressure meds. - BB
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Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019)
Perhaps it’s not surprising that Brad Pitt garnered so much of the attention when it came to director Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film. Newly-ish single and sober, plus shirtless for a scene, he turned in his best performance in years. But if he was the headline, DiCaprio was the film’s heartline. He plays the role of Rick Dalton, a fading actor whose got a drunken death grip on his former fame, with such barefaced emotion it brought me to tears. That’s right: tears, from a Tarantino flick. He was self-loathing, but never pathetic; charming as well as witty. Occasionally, he was downright hilarious. If there was an endless loop of him giving himself that pep talk in his on-set trailer playing somewhere, I would go. As this list attests, DiCaprio has displayed a wide and humbling array of talents on screen during his tenure, but I would argue he has never employed more of them, all at once, with more nuance than he did here. - MV
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