10 Actors Who Went Through Hell To Win An Oscar

By 2016, Leonardo DiCaprio was pretty much frothing at the mouth for a taste of Oscar success, having been nominated 5 times to no avail. The Revenant would finally break that losing streak, and the actor really went all-out to achieve it.

Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu's fact-based chronicle of 19th century frontiersman Hugh Glass and his struggles to survive in the wilderness was shot under notoriously harsh conditions. With daily treks to remote Canadian locations in freezing temperatures, a shoot originally expected to last 5 months wound up taking the best part of 10.

DiCaprio got the brunt of it, with early morning starts to fit multiple prosthetic make-up pieces, wearing bearskins that rapidly went from soaking wet to literally freezing. The actor battled numerous viral infections during the shoot, the film capturing one moment in which he coughed up a huge stream of phlegm for real.

Given the extent that DiCaprio suffered for his art, it's curious that his most frequently cited hardship on The Revenant was one scene in which the long-standing vegetarian ate a real piece of raw liver on camera.