Though Leonardo DiCaprio tends to be the more action-oriented tough guy in movies as opposed to emotionally intense thesp Joseph Gordon-Levitt, they seemed to be switching sides during this meet for Christopher Nolan’s Inception. And while JGL related the thrill of getting banged up doing his own stunts, Leo kept it in the clouds, discussing Freudian analysis of fantasy worlds and flight-of-fancy scenarios penetrating subconscious celeb minds, that at times made it hard to distinguish between the script and a therapy session. Though the biggest challenge of all for Leo, may have been a momentary imaginary incarceration inside a Moroccan vending machine.
Q: Leo, what was the best and worst part of this strange role?
Leonardo DiCaprio: Well look, this was an extremely ambitious concept that Chris was trying to pull off, and he accomplished it with flying colors. There’s not too many directors who would pitch to Hollywood, you know, an existential high-action surreal film that’s locked in somebody’s mind and get the opportunity to do that. So for me, it was a matter of sitting down with Chris and being really able to form the backbone of a character having a real cathartic journey, and to create a scenario that seemed like a giant therapy session! And at the end of the day, these different layers of the dream, like psychoanalysis, and having him getting deeper and closer to the truth about himself. So that in its own right is immediately intriguing, and some of the sequences at the end, [they] start to get very disturbing at times. So as we would talk about my character, it all became more and more exciting. And the toughest sequences…I think that when I had to run through that crowd in Morocco I felt like a pinball, because I was bouncing from Moroccan to Moroccan. And falling into various vending machines! So that was a little bit tough.
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