10 Embarrassing Times Movie Actors Tried To Be Badass
7. Leonardo DiCaprio - Gangs Of New York
Like many of the conflicts depicted in this movie, it’s hardly a fair fight. Leonardo DiCaprio is asked here to lock horns with Daniel Day Lewis, given free reign to absolutely chow down on the scenery as unhinged street fighter Bill The Butcher. Almost anyone would feel unconvincing in comparison.
DiCaprio doesn’t help himself too much, though. While he’d put in great performances prior to this, he wasn’t yet the powerhouse actor he’d become, and seems a bit ill at ease in his costume. His character’s motivations are pretty bland revenge-based fare, and he never fully commits to the semi-Irish accent he’s lumbered with.
More pertinently, he’s not believable as a brawler and a killer. Leo here is just five years removed from Titanic, way before he reshaped his career by way of further, more successful collaborations with Scorsese. He was for a while dismissed as a pretty boy, which was unfair, but the grit he’s asked to exhibit here never feels legitimate.
Most damagingly, though, he’s the star of the show but fades in contrast with the ludicrously committed and gleefully daft work from Day Lewis, the Kensington-born son of a poet laureate who nonetheless feels far more legitimate as a New York gang leader.