Here Is What Leonardo DiCaprio Went Through To Earn His Best Actor Oscar

So Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar. We all know he was one of the most deserving candidates, but the preparation and personal struggle he went through in preparation for his role that won him the award has been entered in the history books, to be recounted as folklore in the far future.

We delve into what DiCaprio went through for his role in The Revenant.

Getting into the skin of Hugh Glass was a tough journey.

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Leonardo DiCaprio plays the role of Hugh Glass, a fur merchant who gets attacked by a grizzly bear and gets abandoned by his hunting party. He then travels across the snowy mountains to survive and exact revenge on his friends who left him to die. Even though the bear attack was CGI, DiCaprio underwent a strict and rigorous transformation to understand the mindset of a person who has to live in murderous weather conditions.

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The crew had to endure the harshest weather conditions.

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The actors, including DiCaprio, had to travel and shoot in extreme weather conditions, where the temperature went to as low as -25°C in the frozen forests of Calgary, Canada. They would travel for hours just to shoot for 90 minutes because of director Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s decision to shoot only in natural light. The snow scenes were shot on an 80-day schedule because of less availability of natural light and bad weather.

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Leonardo DiCaprio, a strict vegetarian, had to eat a real bison’s raw liver.

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There is a scene in the movie where Hugh Glass has to eat a wild bison’s liver to survive. When the time came to shoot the scene, DiCaprio was handed a red gelatinous pancake to pass for a bison’s liver. But it looked so unrealistic to him that he went for the real thing. His lawyers had to be contacted so that he wouldn’t get ill and the liver was inspected thoroughly before the scene so that it was checked off for no diseases.

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DiCaprio hardly talks in this movie, a new feat for him.

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Leonardo DiCaprio has done a lot of movies, and in all of them, he’s talked a hell of a lot. Titanic, The Wolf of Wall Street, Shutter Island, Inception; all have seen him be a big mouth. DiCaprio said he wanted to explore the emotions and state of mind of a person who’s trapped and wants to survive, and hence, he wanted to go in a totally opposite direction as compared to his previous vocal performances. The Revenant is officially DiCaprio’s performance with the least dialogue.

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Ants had to be imported to crawl on DiCaprio. Twice!

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The producers revealed after the shooting of the film that for a particular sequence, they required ants to crawl over DiCaprio. Since there were no ants present in the frozen forest of Calgary where they were shooting, they had to order ants to be flown in from Oregon and Ontario. Some ants from the first batch died during the flight, so they had to fly in another batch. Bad for the ants, Leo, and the producers!

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Leo learnt to speak two Native American languages for his role.

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For his stellar performance as Hugh Glass, Leonardo DiCaprio learnt to speak two Native American languages: Pawnee and Arikara. A special linguist was hired to teach him the Arikara language. Director Iñárritu said he wanted to portray things as realistically as possible and hence Craig Falcon, cultural education consultant, was appointed as cultural advisor for the movie, for the cultural accuracy that the director was aiming for.

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This wasn’t an easy role for DiCaprio. He said that he put in rigorous amounts of hard work for it and that he’d never be able to do it again. From learning to build a fire, to studying with a doctor to learn ancient healing practices, to sitting for hours for fake scars and prosthetic makeup, Leo was the best and obviously deserving winner of the coveted Academy Award for Best Actor. 27 years, but his dedication bore fruit!

Congratulations, Leonardo DiCaprio, you God-awesome actor! ?

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