Leo DiCaprio Sleeps in Dead Animal Carcasses, Eats Raw Liver All for His First Oscar

Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t take any shortcuts on The Revenant in his bid for Oscar glory. He’s been nominated four times for an Oscar, but still hasn’t won one yet. Always the bridesmaid…

With The Revenant, DiCaprio pulled out all the stops. He works with director Alejandro González Iñárritu who won Best Picture and Best Director for Birdman. Immediate points right there. The film also sounds very epic which the voters love.

In the film, DiCaprio stars as Hugh Glass, an 1820s frontiersman who’s left for dead by his fellow travelers after a vicious bear attack. Glass wakes ups under a pile of dirt in the freezing wilderness, and after recovering, he sets out on a lonely, treacherous journey back to civilization — where he plans on enacting his revenge on those who abandoned him, especially a fellow trapper named John Fitzgerald (played by Tom Hardy).

DiCaprio slept in dead animal carcasses and ate raw liver just like any 1820s frontiersman would. I assume. So method!

Were there any moments where you asked yourself, “What the hell have I gotten into?”

I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. [I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly.

What did you have to eat during it?

I certainly don’t eat raw bison liver on a regular basis. When you see the movie, you’ll see my reaction to it, because Alejandro kept it in. It says it all. It was an instinctive reaction.

Raw liver IS pretty gross. You know what’s not gross though? A shiny gold statue on your mantel.

The actual shoot sounded like hell. Raw liver, dead animals and cold temperatures.

You spent nine months in freezing cold Canada and Argentina shooting this. Was there any point where you felt like you were going to break?

The truth is that I knew what I was getting into. This was a film that had been floating around for quite some time, but nobody was crazy enough to really take this on, simply because of the logistics of where we needed to shoot and the amount of work and rehearsal that would have to be done to achieve Alejandro and [cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki] vision.

All the good movies come out during Christmas. The studio scheduled The Revenant to come out a week after Star Wars. Yea, was that smart? I’m not too sure. Even DiCaprio knows Star Wars is gonna swallow up his dead carcass sleeping Oscar bid.

The Revenant is coming out on December 25th — around the same time as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, as well as other holiday movies. What’s the pitch for people to see this one?

There’s always room at the top. I’m going to be in line for Star Wars as well. What’s great about this time of year is, as you know, they save the best for last in most cases. And hopefully, it just means more people are excited to go to the movies. I think that people know this time of year is where a lot of great pieces of art are going to come out. I would never think that we’d be able to compete with Star Wars — that’s something that’s embedded in our cultural DNA. But I think when people begin to hear about this movie, they’ll want to go see it. And that’s all we can hope for.

Hmm… It takes more than sleeping in dead animals and eating gross stuff on camera to win an Oscar, Leo. If he did What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Part 2, he’d definitely have a better chance. The voters love physically and/or mentally challenged roles.

Look at Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne is not on DiCaprio’s level. Throw in a few limps and curled fingers though and bam! You are a true thespian.