A Biography: Leonardo DiCaprio Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the most famous actor alive, was born in Hollywood in 1974. He was an only child whose father was a cartoonist of Italian origin. His mother was a German secretary. The actor was called as Leonardo because he gave his first kick when his pregnant mother was looking at Leonardo da Vinci’s painting at the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence. When he was a child his parents broke up, so he had to live with his mother on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Because of some problems about money they had to move several times. He studied at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and after the high school diploma he began to study acting. But he appeared for the first time on TV when he was only three years old. When he was child he took part on a TV show for children and he was asked to shoot a TV commercial. In 1991 arrived his first acting in the cinema and when he was 16 years old he was selected to play a movie with Robert de Niro. In 1997 the movie Titanic, directed by James Cameron, transformed DiCaprio into a superstar: the movie had a huge success and became the highest-grossing film.