DICAPRIO, Leonardo

(1974– )

   Born Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio in Hollywood, California, DiCaprio played “The Kid,” a classic young gunfighter with an itchy trigger finger, in The Quick and the Dead (1995). The Kid brags unendingly about how fast he is. To the gunfighter Ellen (Sharon Stone), he claims, “I’m so damned fast I can wake up at the crack of dawn, rob two banks, a train and a stage coach, shoot the tail feathers off a duck’s ass at 300 feet, and still be back in bed before you wake up next to me.” The Kid is Herod’s (Gene Hackman) son and has never lived up to his father’s expectations. It turns out that The Kid is not as fast on the draw as he thought: “Damn, that is fast!” he exclaims as he falls dead at his father’s hand, the loser of a quick-draw shootout with Ellen. DiCaprio has been nominated for Academy Awards three times, all for non-Western roles.

   See also CROWE, Russell.