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The Kid Stays in the Pictures
By MARSHALL SELLA

Leonardo DiCaprio gawks at celebrities. Not gawks, exactly. He's hardly awed by them, but he watches them 
like an outsider. He is lounging in the half-shade on a promenade at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, 
gazing out over a square of perfect green toward the hotel's outdoor restaurant, where celebrated 
performers are sipping drinks under cream-colored umbrellas and, above those, the high hibiscus that 
buffers the hotel from the clamor of Sunset Boulevard. ''Man, look at that,'' he says. ''There's a 
celebrity at every single table out there! Val Kilmer, Heath Ledger, that guy from 'Saturday Night Live.' 
 
At 28, DiCaprio has already ridden the entire Hollywood arc of celebrity. After his first feature role, 
in ''This Boy's Life,'' which also starred Robert De Niro, he was greeted as a Wunderkind; this artiste 
phase was bolstered by his performances in ''What's Eating Gilbert Grape'' and ''Total Eclipse,'' in which 
he played the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. With 1997's ''Titanic,'' of course, he attained rock-star status. 
But Icarus must plummet to earth; that's his job. DiCaprio's next two films were shunned, his pre-''Titanic'' 
tours de force suddenly a dim memory. Critics thrashed ''The Man in the Iron Mask'' and ''The Beach.'' 
Even the public turned against him. Rolling Stone's DiCaprio cover issue at the time was one of the 
worst-selling in that magazine's history. DiCaprio soon became better known for catting around nightclubs 
than for acting. No one can be king of the world for long, except for those who die young. 

But DiCaprio is still breathing, entering what he would never, ever, characterize as his resurrection 
stage. In the public imagination, he has been off licking his wounds -- though that is hardly the 
case -- and is now returning with not one but two major films. Next month, he stars in Martin 
Scorsese's ''Gangs of New York'' and Steven Spielberg's ''Catch Me if You Can,'' which will be 
released within five days of each other. (''Gangs'' arrives on Dec. 20 and ''Catch Me'' on 
Christmas Day.) ''Gangs,'' in which DiCaprio stars as a dour, furtive Irishman out to avenge 
his father's death in the Manhattan of the 1860's, is Scorsese's longtime dream project, a brutal 
allegory for the American experiment and a cinematic elaboration of the Balzacian truism that behind 
every great fortune lies a great crime. ''Catch Me'' is quite the other thing: a breezy Spielberg romp, 
offering a once again lithe and charming DiCaprio as a real-life teenage con man who made millions while 
posing as an airline pilot, lawyer and doctor. 

These days, DiCaprio is engaged in an amiable con game of his own -- with the public. He wants to erase 
the tabloid memories of his past, to reclaim his mantle as a young genius. He doesn't want to discuss 
his failed romance with Gisele Bundchen, the fashion model, or his reputation as a late-night canoodler. 
In person, he's easygoing and affable. But talking with him about his career is like playing a careful 
game of chess, and he always seems to be thinking three moves ahead. He routinely tracks back and reverses 
phrases he has just spoken; you can see him scrutinizing everything he says, as if he's reading it in 
imaginary ink. Once freewheeling, even reckless, Leonardo DiCaprio has learned how to play the Hollywood 
game. 

DiCaprio has also matured in the way he handles his career. He exercises more power in selecting his roles 
and has made an extremely savvy choice by straddling the Scorsese-to-Spielberg gamut. The two films, and 
the two DiCaprios, could not be more different. Their diversity is an emblem of the actor's bifurcating 
persona. ''Gangs'' offers a life-bitten, brooding icon -- an attempt to hack away the trappings of 
DiCaprio's boyhood fame, as evidenced by the 30 pounds of muscle he gained for the part. He is hardly 
the sleek romantic lead that mesmerized fans of ''Titanic''; he is driven and scarred. The film, he 
fiercely hopes, portends a future as a serious adult actor, in which he will be free to break from 
his dreamboat identity. At the other end of the spectrum, ''Catch Me'' offers perhaps the more natural 
Leo: unburdened by the weight of ordinary maturity, he plays a teenage boy. More important, ''Catch Me,''
 with its combination of Spielberg at the helm and Tom Hanks as co-star, is the perfect career insurance 
policy. Even if the more daring ''Gangs'' flops, Spielberg's confection, spruced up in swank white dinner 
jackets and cool sunglasses (and even a touch of doomed love) will be ushered into American multiplexes 
a few days later. Though the dual release was somewhat accidental, DiCaprio now effectively owns Christmas. 
There's never been a case in which a major Hollywood star had two films of such prominence sweep the country 
within one week. This is less a comeback than a full-blown assault.