A childhood dream come true! Leonardo
DiCaprio couldn't stop smiling as he went backstage after winning an Academy
Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role at Sunday, February 28's Oscars 2016 -
admitting the entire experience felt "surreal."
And as he addressed members of the
press, including Us Weekly, backstage at Los Angeles' Dolby Theater, the actor
admitted that getting his part in The Revenant and his (eventual!) Oscar win at
the 88th Academy Awards, was something he'd been dreaming of since he was a
kid.
"I grew up in East Los Angeles," he told reporters. "I was very close to the Hollywood studio system, but I felt detached from it my whole life. And to have had parents that have allowed me to be a part of this industry, to take me on auditions every day after school, and to tell stories like this has been my dream ever since I was 4 years old," he said.
"This film to me was exemplary in
the sense that I got to work with a director, all the things we spoke about off
camera during the making of this movie transferred their way on screen. This
was true storytelling."
DiCaprio admitted he'd been totally
overwhelmed by the huge support he'd received from fans via the Internet, in
the run up to this year's Oscars.
"It all feels incredibly surreal,
because you can't reach out and physically meet everybody," he said.
"You hear it on the Internet, you hear it from other people, and we always
strive for the best in what we do. But this year in particular, I've been
overwhelmed with such support," he said.
One former costar who has been
particularly supportive is Titanic actress Kate Winslet, and DiCaprio was
determined to make sure everybody who had championed his cause in the run up to
this year's Oscars ceremony, knew how much it meant to him.
"Really, truly, [I've had support
from] so many fans and so many people in the industry, it's quite shocking,
actually," he said, looking stunned. "And what can you say except I'm
very grateful, I really am."
The six-time Oscar nominee also made
sure that he used his backstage platform to bring some international focus to
the topic of climate change, as he did during his on-stage acceptance speech
too.
"This whole thing has been an
amazing experience," he went on. "And for me to be able to sit there
and not only talk about the film, but to talk about something that I've been
duly as obsessed with besides cinema, and that's our environment and climate
change - to be able to speak about that in a platform of hundreds of millions
of people that are watching this. Like I said, this is the most existential
crisis our civilization has ever known and I wanted to speak out about that
tonight because it's imperative that we act," he went on.
"I feel so overwhelmed with
gratitude for what happened tonight," he added. "But I feel there is
a ticking clock out there. There's a sense of urgency that we all must do
something proactive about this issue. And certainly with this upcoming
election, we need to all join together and vote for leaders who care about the
future of this civilization and the world as we know it."
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