Leonardo DiCaprio was once told he wouldn’t make it in Hollywood if he didn’t change his name.
DiCaprio, 50, appeared on the Wednesday, September 24, episode of Travis and Jason Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast, where he opened up about a “holy s***” moment in his acting career: being told by his first agent that his name was “too ethnic.”
“I go, ‘What do you mean, it’s Leonardo DiCaprio?’ They go, ‘No, too ethnic. They’re never going to hire you,’” he recalled.
DiCaprio, who was 12 or 13 years old at the time, said that the agent then gave him a new name to use.
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“‘Your new name is Lenny Williams,’” he remembered the agent saying. “I said, ‘What is Lenny?’ … ‘We took your middle name [Wilhelm] and we made it your [last name]. Now you’re Lenny.’”
DiCaprio said that his father, George DiCaprio, who is a performance artist and writer, was not happy with the decision.
“My dad saw his photo, ripped it up, and he said, ‘Over my dead body,’” the Wolf of Wall Street actor continued.
Jason, 37, and Travis, 35, then poked fun at what their second podcast guest Benicio Del Toro’s new name would be.
“Benny Dell?” Jason joked. “This podcast would not be the same with Lenny Williams and Benny Dell. I tell you that right now. That WWE intro would not sound the same.”
Leonardo DiCaprio, 1993 Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
The DiCaprio name is of Italian origin, although much of Leonardo’s ancestry also includes German lineage. George, 81, and Leonardo’s mother, Irmelin Indenbirken — a German legal secretary — named their son after Leonardo da Vinci because, when Irmelin, 82, was pregnant, she felt the baby kick while looking at one of the famous artist’s paintings in the Uffizi museum in Florence, Italy.
“My father took that as a sign, and I suppose DiCaprio wasn’t that far from da Vinci. And so, my dad, being the artist that he is, said, ‘That’s our boy’s name,’” DiCaprio told NPR in 2014.
While Leonardo found success in his career in 1993 with the films This Boy’s Life and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape — and without having to change his name — he revealed on “New Heights” that he initially struggled to land on his feet.
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“I remember auditioning when I was very young. I was like a child actor,” the Titanic star said. “My stepbrother was an actor, and there were these acting agents that would line you up like cattle. I was a break-dancer. I’d break dance for, like, money on the streets sometimes. Oh, yeah. I had the step haircut.”
Leonardo recalled other break-dancers getting roles while he was rejected and noticing that they had agents.
“I remember saying to my dad, ‘This is horrible.’ I went back, and they did it again,” he continued. “‘Yes. Yes. No. No.’ I just remember my dad saying, you know, ‘Someday you’re gonna have your time, son. Just keep at it. Keep at it.’”