Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom "Growing Pains" and low budget horror movies, such as "Critters 3," to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s, as the hunky lead actor in movies such as "Romeo + Juliet" and "Titanic," to then become a leading man in Hollywood blockbusters, made by internationally renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.

DiCaprio was born November 11, 1974 in Los Angeles, California. Leonardo's performance skills became obvious to his parents early on, and after signing him up with a talent agent who wanted Leonardo to perform under the stage name "Lenny Williams", DiCaprio began appearing on a number of television commercials and educational programs.

DiCaprio began attracting the attention of producers, who cast him in small roles in a number of television series, such as “Roseanne” and “The New Lassie,” but it wasn't until 1991 that DiCaprio made his film debut in “Critters 3,” a low-budget horror movie. Next, he joined the cast of “Growing Pains,” in which Leonardo was cast in the "Cousin Oliver" role of a young homeless boy who moves in with the Seavers.

Leonardo took up a diverse range of roles in the early 1990s, including a mentally challenged youth in “What's Eating Gilbert Grape,” a young gunslinger in “The Quick and the Dead” and a drug addict in one of his most challenging roles to date, Jim Carroll in “The Basketball Diaries,” It wasn't until his role as Romeo Montague in Baz Luhrmann's “Romeo + Juliet” that Leonardo became a household name. The following year, DiCaprio starred in another movie about doomed lovers called “Titanic,” which became the highest grossing movie of all time. Following his work on Titanic, DiCaprio kept a low profile for a number of years, with roles in “The Man in the Iron Mask” and the low-budget “The Beach.”

DiCaprio is a committed environmentalist who is actively involved in many environmental causes, and his commitment to this issue led to his involvement in The 11th Hour, a documentary movie about the state of the natural environment. He has donated $1,000,000 to earthquake relief efforts in 2010, the same year he contributed $1,000,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

DiCaprio continued to defy conventions about the types of roles he would accept, and with his career now seeing him leading all-star casts in action thrillers such as The Departed, Shutter Island and Christopher Nolan's Inception, DiCaprio continues to wow audiences by refusing to conform to any cliché about actors. In 2012, he played a mustache-twirling villain in “Django Unchained,” then tragic literary character Jay Gatsby in “The Great Gatsby” and Jordan Belfort in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

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