The shoot for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's upcoming frontier epic "The Revenant" was notoriously difficult, involving months of sub-zero conditions, hypothermia, animal carcasses, and raw bison liver. But while star Leonardo DiCaprio has said that the flick was easily the most challenging shoot of his career, he's had a few intense encounters in the past that prepared him for literally any death-defying scenario that life can throw his way.In an interview with Wired, DiCaprio discussed his multiple brushes with his mortality, telling the magazine, "My friends have named me the person they least want to do extreme adventures with, because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster. If a cat has nine lives, I think I've used a few."
And just what, exactly, has Leo encountered over the years? Well, first there was that infamous shark incident, which DiCaprio described last year, and detailed again for Wired:
"A great white jumped into my cage when I was diving in South Africa. Half its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me. ... I sort of fell down to the bottom and tried to lie flat. The great white took about five or six snaps an arm's length away from my head. The guys there said that has never happened in the 30 years they'd been doing it."
Whoa. What else?
"Then there was this Delta Airlines flight to Russia. I was in business class, and an engine blew up in front of my eyes. ... I was sitting there looking out at the wing, and the entire wing exploded in a fireball. ... It was crazy. They shut all the engines off for a couple of minutes, so you're just sitting there gliding with absolutely no sound, and nobody in the plane was saying anything. It was a surreal experience. They started the engines back up, and we did an emergency landing at JFK."
Jeez. Is there really more?
"The other one was the skydiving incident. It was a tandem dive. We pulled the first chute. That was knotted up. The gentleman I was with cut it free. We did another free fall for like another 5, 10 seconds. I didn't even think about the extra chute, so I thought we were just plummeting to our death. He pulled the second, and that was knotted up too. He just kept shaking it and shaking it in midair, as all my friends were, you know, what felt like half a mile above me, and I'm plummeting toward earth. [Laughs.] And he finally unravels it in midair. The fun part was when he said, "You're probably going to break your legs on the way down, because we're going too fast now." So after you see your whole life flash in front of your eyes—twice—he says, "Oh, your legs are going to get broken too." ... [W]e did, like, this barrel roll. We got bruised up, but no broken legs."
Wow. He may just be right about that whole "nine lives" thing.
DiCaprio has been campaigning pretty hard for an Oscar for "The Revenant," and honestly, we can't say we blame him. Aside from the fact that it's truly his time to finally snag a little golden guy, it also makes sense that he's a bit desperate -- apparently, he's always just moments from death, and we'd hate to see him go before earning Oscar glory. Do the right thing, Academy voters.
[via: Wired]
Photo credit: Getty Images for Screen Actors Guild Foundation
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