Leo DiCaprio Slept In Dead Animal Carcasses and Ate Raw Bison Liver On Set For "The Revenant", Wants An Oscar Sooo Bad
Vanity Fair – In the words of a crew member on Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant, the harrowing film shoot for the survivalist epic was “a living hell.” The cast and crew suffered blistering temperatures; the budget ballooned after a global search for snow; crew members fled the project; and some actors were submerged in freezing water while one was reportedly dragged naked across the icy terrain in a 200-person battle scene. And now, The Revenant star Leonardo DiCaprio has opened up about the individual sacrifices he made for the performance that could finally win him that elusive best-actor Oscar.
DiCaprio plays a 19th-century frontiersman who, after suffering a violent bear attack, embarks on a journey through freezing wilderness to exact revenge on the trapper who abandoned him for dead, played by Tom Hardy. And in a new interview, DiCaprio makes it clear that making the movie was, in some ways, just as agonizing as what his character endures in the story.
“I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do,” the actor tells Yahoo. “Whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. [I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly.”
As for what he ingested in the wild, let’s leave it at this: “I certainly don’t eat raw bison liver on a regular basis,” DiCaprio teases. “When you see the movie, you’ll see my reaction to it, because Alejandro kept it in. It says it all. It was an instinctive reaction.”
DiCaprio also discusses filming the graphic bear-attack scene, which involved cables and precise choreography.
“[Those scenes]—amongst many other sequences—were some of the more difficult things I’ve ever had to do in my entire career,” DiCaprio says. “But the end result is going to be one of the most immersive experiences audiences will ever have with what it would be like to come face-to-face with an animal of that magnitude that is incredibly primal.”
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Would somebody for the love of god PLEASE give Leo his Oscar? Please? Before he dies? I mean the guy is honestly killing himself over here. He’s trying all different sorts of roles. Expanding his range. Working with different directors. He’s sleeping in fucking dead animal carcasses and eating raw bison meat. What does the guy have to do? He already ripped his damn hand open in real life for that awesome scene in *Django, that didn’t work. Academy making him resort to living like an actual 19th century frontiersman on the brink of death from hypothermia and food poisoning. Savages. Leo just can’t catch ANY breaks in his life.
Also not to be “that guy” but I just read the book this movie is based on and let’s just say it’s going to be bad fucking ass, in case you didn’t know that already.