The real reason Leonardo DiCaprio became interested in climate change
Leonardo DiCaprio belongs to the growing group of celebrities involved in activism. But the Oscar-winning actor has been doing it longer than most of his peers.
Leonardo DiCaprio launched his foundation in 1998, many years before George Clooney co-founded The Enough Project's The Sentry in 2015, or Angelina Jolie became involved with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the early 2000s.
And not only that, DiCaprio is also a pioneer in the area of activism that he engages in. DiCaprio warned of the negative effects of climate change in a decade when the topic was still largely absent from headlines and our daily conversations, as he told Wired in 2015.
He launched the foundation in an effort "to urgently respond to a growing climate crisis and the staggering loss of biodiversity that threatens the stability of life on Earth."
And he continues to promote those same themes two decades later.
"Climate change is real. It's happening right now. It's the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we must work together and stop procrastinating," DiCaprio said in his acceptance speech at the 2016 Academy Awards. .
Ironically or not, DiCaprio's first Oscar win after so many nominations was for "The Revenant," a movie that ran into trouble during filming because producers struggled to find a location with enough snow to shoot. It turns out that DiCaprio's passion for the environment ran so deep when he was a child that he wanted to make it his career.
Leonardo DiCaprio's love for nature dates back to childhood
Leonardo DiCaprio grew up in Los Angeles, surrounded mostly by buildings and not trees. But even in the concrete jungle, a young DiCaprio developed a strong bond with nature.
"I've been interested in science and biodiversity since I was very young, probably from watching movies about the rainforest at the Natural History Museum," DiCaprio told Wired in 2015, adding that he lived in the Silver Lake area and , therefore, relatively close to the museum.
Even then, both film and nature combined to develop the skills that went on to define his life and his career. "I was exposed to the wonders of nature through film: Imax documentaries and whatnot," he detailed.
However, he saw those two worlds differently.
Cinema was a passion and nature could become a career. DiCaprio wanted to be a marine biologist, he told Gayle King on "CBS Mornings" in 2014.
In fact, he started looking for acting jobs as a way to save money for college.
That's not to say he didn't love acting. He did, but he never thought he could turn it into a career. "Even though, ironically, I lived in Hollywood, it always seemed like this mystical place where I could never belong," he told King.
But in his senior year of high school, DiCaprio landed the role of Luke Brower in "Growing Pains" and learned quickly enough that being a marine biologist wasn't in the cards.
Al Gore played a major role in Leonardo DiCaprio's activism
Although Leonardo DiCaprio had always been passionate about the environment and was often annoyed by news reports of animal species becoming extinct due to human activity, he may not have focused his energy and resources on the cause if he hadn't. It would have been for Al Gore.
In 1998, he met Gore at an event at the White House, where the then vice president explained climate change to DiCaprio by drawing the earth and its surrounding atmosphere. "And he says, 'If you want to get involved in environmental issues, this is something that not a lot of people are talking about ... but climate change is the biggest threat to humanity that we've ever had,'" DiCaprio told Wired.
The meeting occurred shortly after he left "Titanic," a point in his career that saw him consider taking a break from acting and exploring other possibilities, he recalled. "I wanted to reevaluate the other great passion of my life," he said. DiCaprio launched his foundation that same year.
The author of "An Inconvenient Truth" continued to serve as an inspiration for DiCaprio.
About a decade later, they coincidentally ran into each other on the same flight to Europe. "Leo talked to Al the whole flight, he picked Al's brain all night, and it was a red eye. The two of them talked all night. That's pretty unusual," Kalee Kreider, who worked for Gore, told The Guardian. in 2016.
