5 Reasons Leonardo DiCaprio Should Win Best Actor Oscar This Year (And 5 Reasons Why He Won't)

5. He IS The Wolf Of Wall Street (He Should)

DiCaprio is great as the high-finance crook Jordan Belfort, but he isn't the same kind of actor as Daniel Day-Lewis or Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Whenever you see a movie with Leo in it, you are going to bring your conceptions about his real-life personality with you. This is not to say that he is a bad actor or even that we see through his performance, it's just that audiences are generally aware of his personality before they watch a movie DiCaprio is in. And let's face it, he is known for having a kind of frat-boy mentality, which plays perfectly into his role in The Wolf of Wall Street. The sort of dissonance between character and actor can be frustrating for certain people who yearn for "accurate portrayals" particularly when it concerns events based in reality, but The Wolf of Wall Street isn't that kind of film. When you see the film you are repeatedly reminded that you are watching a movie. That makes Leo's persona outside the realm of movie-land fair game, and you get the sense that Scorsese is knowingly toying with the perceptions of both the debauchery of the Wall Street lifestyle and DiCaprio's own.