If history had gone differently, “Titanic” would’ve starred Lenny Williams.
In a recent appearance on the “New Heights” podcast, Leonardo DiCaprio said an agent told him in his early teens that his name was “too ethnic,” and suggested he go by the stage name Lenny Williams instead.
“I finally got an agent. They said, ‘Your name is too ethnic,’” DiCaprio recalled. “I go, ‘What do you mean? It’s Leonardo DiCaprio?’ They go, ‘No, too ethnic. They’re never going to hire you. Your new name is Lenny Williams.’”
He continued, “I said, ‘What is Lenny?’ I was 12,13. I said, ‘What is Lenny Williams?’ ‘We took your middle name and we made it. Now you’re Lenny.’”
The “Wolf of Wall Street” star added that when he showed his father his headshot printed with the new name, he “ripped it up, and he said, ‘Over my dead body.’”
Benicio Del Toro, who appeared in the interview alongside DiCaprio, also had an agent push him to change his name. He shared, “I was told the same thing. ‘You’re Benny Del.’”
DiCaprio and Del Toro co-star in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s upcoming thriller “One Battle After Another,” which hits theaters Sept. 26. The film stars DiCaprio as Bob, a burnt-out revolutionary who must team up with his former conspirators to rescue his daughter from an old foe.
Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman was keen on the film. He wrote in his review, “‘One Battle After Another’ is a movie that taps into the fierce urgency of now; it gives you a chill that’s also a wake-up call. Yet when you hear the movie described, it can sound rather aggressive in its dystopian topicality, like a bombs-away, knowingly over-the-top thriller-satire of where we are today and where we might be headed.”
