Leonardo DiCaprio‘s favorite actor as a teenager ended up working with him years later. During the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, where DiCaprio was nominated for his performance in One Battle After Another, host Nikki Glaser referenced an interview that DiCaprio gave to Teen Beat magazine in 1991 where he revealed his favorite food is “pasta, pasta, and more pasta.”
During her opening monologue, Glaser urged audiences to look up the real interview and later, during the mid-show recap, one of the trending searches was “pasta pasta pasta real?,” and Glaser referenced another part of the interview where DiCaprio revealed his favorite music was reggae or “as he spelled it when he was 17, reggea.”
The full interview quickly surfaced online (via @A_dawg956 on X), in which Leonardo DiCaprio revealed that his favorite actor as a teenager was Jack Nicholson, who he ended up working with 15 years later on The Departed. Check out the full interview below:
Directed by Martin Scorsese, with a script written by William Monahan based on the Chinese film Infernal Affairs (2002), The Departed stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an undercover state trooper in Boston who is assigned to infiltrate the crew of Irish mob boss Frank Costello (played by Jack Nicholson), who simultaneously plants a spy within the Massachusetts State Police.
In addition to Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson, The Departed cast also includes Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Corrigan, James Badge Dale, David O’Hara, Mark Rolston, Amanda Lynch, Kristen Dalton, and Shay Duffin.
The Departed received rave reviews, resulting in a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics calling it a gripping crime drama marked by the raw realism and murky morality characteristic of Martin Scorsese movies, bolstered by exceptional performances from its stellar ensemble.
The Departed has an even stronger 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it was a box office hit that made $291.5 million against its $90 million budget.
The Departed was nominated for five Academy Awards and won four of them, including Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese (his only Oscar to date), Best Adapted Screenplay for Monahan, and Best Editing for Thelma Schoonmaker.
DiCaprio’s teenage admiration came full circle in The Departed when he finally shared the screen with his idol, Jack Nicholson, matching him beat for beat for several intense scenes.
