Leonardo DiCaprio more selective with work now

Leonardo DiCaprio no longer works at a "frenetic pace".

The 50-year-old actor has reflected on how his attitude to his career has changed over the years and whereas he used to feel very lucky just to be offered work, these days he is more selective about the jobs he takes on.

He told Rolling Stone magazine: "When I was younger, there was just this feeling of hitting the lottery. It was very much like, 'I can’t believe I’m working in this industry, and I’m getting to make decisions for myself.'

"And there’s this frenetic pace that you have.

"But now, you know, I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve just become even more… I don’t want to say selective, but all these different components have to come into play to make a movie and hope that it not only works but lasts, even if there are no guarantees of either of those things."

His One Battle After Another director, Paul Thomas Anderson, finds more pleasure in the work itself and the experiences he has on set.

He said in the joint interview: "It’s not that I feel any different than I did in terms of what the spark is, or the fight to make your movie, or the excitement of it all. It’s more that the thing I cherish the most now and gets me the most excited is the friendship and camaraderie and the collaboration that happens when you do the work.

"That’s the thing that gets me out of the bed in the morning. You know, maybe when you start out, you do feel like you’ve won the lottery more. But now, the joy of making the movie itself is so much deeper and stronger."

The pair had spent a lot of time discussing One Battle After Another before it came to fruition and they both found the "energy changed" on the project when Benicio Del Toro joined the cast and ultimately made the film "better".

Leonardo said: "Look, Paul had been working on this a long time, there were a lot of moving parts and a lot of layers here. We were something like three months in when Benicio showed up, and he immediately had all of these ideas. The energy changed.

"It was suddenly like [del Toro] and I were in a Cheech + Chong road movie for like a week.

"Some sets, it would be like, 'We’ve already been at this for a while.' With Paul, it was like, 'OK, you guys understand these characters. Let’s see what happens.' "

Paul added: "There was the sense that the film might have gone in a darker direction, and it didn’t sit well with either of us. And then when Benicio came in and I saw how their characters interacted, it was like, there’s another option here. It felt better. It made more sense."