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Even Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio needs to be told to tone it down sometimes.
The 48-year-old actor was hilariously outed this week by none other than Martin Scorsese for his purportedly excessive improvisation while filming “Killers of the Flower Moon.” This ultimately left DiCaprio’s costar — Robert De Niro himself — visibly vexed.
Scorsese’s anticipated crime drama regards the real-life Osage Nation murders in 1920s Oklahoma after oceans of oil were found on the land. While it’s the first Scorsese film to star both longtime collaborators of the acclaimed director, their acting approaches sometimes didn’t mesh.
Scorsese told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that DiCaprio’s method was rather tedious.
“Oh, endless, endless, endless!” Scorsese told the outlet about DiCaprio’s incessant urge to discuss things and improvise in his scenes with De Niro. “Then Bob didn’t want to talk. Every now and then, Bob and I would look at each other and roll our eyes a little bit.”
He continued: “And we’d tell him, ‘You don’t need that dialogue.’”
Scorsese made some of the most iconic films in history with De Niro, including “Taxi Driver” (1976), “Raging Bull” (1980) and “Goodfellas” (1990). They reunited on “The Irishman” (2019), after DiCaprio had formed his own prolific working relationship with Scorsese.
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“Killers of the Flower Moon” marks DiCaprio’s sixth feature with Scorsese, who cast him at 27 years old in “Gangs of New York” (2002). The pair later made “The Aviator” (2004), “The Departed” (2006), “Shutter Island” (2010) and “The Wolf Of Wall Street” (2013) together.
“Killers” marks De Niro’s 10th feature film collaboration with Scorsese.
It was ironically De Niro himself who first told the director about DiCaprio, as he was so impressed by the actor’s performance in “This Boy’s Life” (1993) that he called Scorsese to gush about him. DiCaprio also inspired Scorsese to reassess his approach to “Killers.”
“After two years of working on the script, Leo came to me and asked, ‘Where is the heart of this story?’” Scorsese told The Irish Times. “I had had meetings and dinners with the Osage, and I thought, ‘Well, there’s the story.’”
Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth had already adapted David Grann’s 2017 book into a script, but ultimately rewrote it to shift the focus from a procedural about white FBI agents to a more truthful drama about the plight of the indigenous Osage.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” hits theaters Oct. 20.