Two decades after playing the legendary Wisconsin artist and philosopher Jack Dawson in James Cameron’s 1997 stunning biopic Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio has been cast in the title role in Leonardo Da Vinci, based on Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography of the same name.
Variety reports the movie will be released by Paramount, after a “seven-figure bidding war” for the rights to Isaacson’s book, which hasn’t even been published yet. They also share this allegedly “famous” anecdote about DiCaprio (who will also be producing the film) that I had never heard:
The actor’s mother famously claims to have chosen the artist as her son’s namesake when she felt an in utero DiCaprio kick for the first time while examining a da Vinci piece at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy back in 1974.
So while I initially found it strange that Leonardo DiCaprio would follow up his long-awaited Best Actor Oscar with another Oscar bait-y biopic role about an unparalleled Italian genius whom I’m incapable of imagining as ever being under 60, just know it was a role he was literally born to play.