Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood. In addition to his natural talent for acting, the Los Angeles star is one of the few actors who does not have major scandals behind him. However, although most of his professional colleagues have praised his professionalism, there are some who have had tense episodes with him.
One of them is Mark Wahlberg, who shared the cast with DiCaprio 30 years ago in ‘The Basketball Diaries’ (1995), when they were both emerging performers trying to make it in a complex world. According to Mark, the ‘Titanic’ star did not have a good image of him when Scott Kalvert cast him for one of the roles in the film.
Wahlberg: “This f***ing a**hole is not going to be in this movie”
“Leonardo said, ‘Over my dead body. Marky Mark is not going to be in this f***ing movie’. Because we had a thing; I didn’t even realize it, [but] I was a bit of an a**hole to him at a charity basketball game. So he said, ‘This f***ing a**hole is not going to be in this movie’,” Wahlberg confessed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Fortunately for Mark Wahlberg, casting director Avy Kaufman got DiCaprio to agree to a casting call in which he had the opportunity to show off enough to get the role: “I went in, auditioned, looked at him and he looked at me, and then we did a scene and they said, ‘Hmm, this damn guy is pretty good, right?’ The next thing I knew we were hanging out together,” he concluded.
Over the years, Mark Wahlberg and Leonardo DiCaprio ended up becoming great friends and both have fond memories of this scene. They also worked together again in 2006, with Martin Scorsese’s magnificent film ‘The Departed’.