How Robert De Niro convinced Martin Scorsese to take a chance on Leonardo DiCaprio | CPT PPP Coverage

But it was actually De Niro who first recommended his successor to Scorsese. During a Q&A at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Scorsese told the story of how he first stumbled upon the future star: “Robert De Niro told me, ‘By the way, I’m working with this young kid. He’s really good. You should work with him some time. His name is Dicaprio.’ and I said ‘OK.’” 

De Niro and DiCaprio had worked together on the 1993 coming-of-age This Boy’s Life, which sees them play stepson and stepfather. 400 actors had been shortlisted for the starring role, and De Niro himself chose DiCaprio from the list. Before then, DiCaprio had featured in just two films amongst roles in various television shows. 

At the time he made the recommendation, Scorsese had last collaborated with De Niro on the 1995 crime drama Casino. The film marked their eighth project together and rounded out their spectacular collaborative run from the 1970s to the 1990s. Scorsese and De Niro didn’t work together again until The Audition in 2015. 

Scorsese suggests that these circumstances gave the recommendation more weight: “It’s been different since. We don’t see each other that often. So, for him to recommend somebody, out of the blue, that way to me, during a phone call, was very, very special.” 

Though Scorsese didn’t see What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? while it was in cinemas, he recalls a time that he and his wife caught the film showing on television: “I thought it was a documentary… And I was amazed by [Leo]. And then, I realised that it was actually a staged film. I thought, ‘Who’s that boy?’ We saw the name, and it was the name that De Niro told me about.” 

Stunned by his acting abilities, Scorsese went on to cast DiCaprio in Gangs of New York in 2002, the beginning of a lengthy collaboration that persists even now. Dicaprio stars in Scorsese’s upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon alongside De Niro, due for release later this year.

With seven Scorsese films to his name, DiCaprio doesn’t quite beat De Niro’s 11, but both partnerships have become an integral part of Scorsese’s loved and successful filmography.