The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
Leonardo DiCaprio hasn’t endured as a fixture of American pop culture isn’t just because he’s a great actor, which he is. It’s also his willingness to play any part, regardless of how bad it might make him look. It just so happens that many of his most memorable roles are the ones where he comes off the absolute worst. Take his stock broker in The Wolf of Wall Street, for example, or the heinously racist plantation owner in Django Unchained. These performances tend to stick in my memory far more than most of the ones where Leo plays a person we’re supposed to like.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for several of DiCaprio’s older films, along with his latest, Killers of the Flower Moon.
Killers of the Flower Moon is another one of these films. Here, Leo plays Ernest Burkhart, a man who helps his uncle try to steal oil money from the Osage people by marrying into an Osage family and then assisting in murdering all of them. For those not familiar with the true story on which Martin Scorsese’s film was based, you might get the impression from the ads that Ernest Burkhart could be a White Savior character–but it ain’t true, I assure you.
But, of course, Ernest is just one of many Leonardo DiCaprio characters who could use a little bit of facial rearranging. His filmography, as mentioned, is pretty stocked with guys who, for one reason or another, would very likely benefit from some tough love. Not every role he’s taken in his three-plus decades of his career has been one of these, but Leo’s skill as an actor, his broad choice of roles, and his boyish good looks have combined to produce a number of character’s we’ve had strong reactions to. Let’s go through them, in order of release.