"Amazing," said Billy Zane's Cal Hockley when he spotted a tuxedoed Leonardo Dicaprio at the foot of that doomed ship's grand staircase. "You could almost pass for a gentleman." But who needs to? Even in his offscreen uniform of baggy jeans and t-shirts, this 23-year-old Titanic stunner is a first-class dreamboat. "Leo is absolutly awesome," costar Kate Winslet says. Claire Danes, who starred with Dicaprio in 1996's William Shakespear's Romeo & Juliet, prefers an understatement: "Leo is very aesthetically pleasing."
And yet it's more than his soulfull face that has sparked pubescent riots aruond the world, inspired four Leo-related bestsellers and more than 500 websites and made Dicaprio the most coveted man on the planet. Beneath the poet's brow, cherub lips and ocean-blue eyes beats the heart of a puckish pat boy, known for a raucous sense of humor, dead on impersonations of his costars and an unsinkable jioe de vivre. "You can name at least 10 actors who are just as cute," says Amanda Mackey Johnson, casting director for The Man in the Iron Mask. "But they don't have the same animating spirit that comes through with Leo."
The star himself squirms under such admiration and, in fact, goes out of his way to aviod compliments. When not working, the six-footer has been known to pull his hair back with a baseball cap or a tiny wire headband ("The most masculine one I could find," he told vanity Fair.) And while most actors put in hours at the gym, Dicaprio perfers to go club-hopping with friends, where he dances to hip-hop, smokes Cohiba cigars and tosses back Absolute and cranberry juice cocktails into the wee hours. ("Leo comes to the clubs like you and I go to MacDonald's," says Andre, the maitre d' at Manhattan's trendy hot spot Life.) Neither is he afriad to put those delicate features at risk, spending his free time in such pursuits as racing all-terrain vehicles, skydiving and bungee jumping. Says Titanic director James Cameron: "Leo doesn't try to impress anybody. Leo knows who he is."
Despite an appeal that transcends generations ("He has this vulnerable look that makes older women want to mother him," says Titanic choreographer Lynne Hockney), the actor claims he hasn;t had a steady girlfriend since ending a 15-month romance with L.A. model Kristin Zang last year. (He denies reported romances with actress Natasha Henstridge and models Amber Valleta and Naomi Campbell.) And though he has already finished a small role as a rock star in Woody Allen's forthcoming film, Celebrity, Dicaprio plans to take some time off before beginning another movie. He hopes to use the break to settle in both his new Los Angeles home (in November he moved out of the Los Feliz, Calif., house he shared with his divorced mother, Irmelin) and his new superstar status. "You want to be remembered for your work rather than being sort of the hunk of the month," he told Good Morning America's Joel Siegel in December. "There's always a new pretty face." Not like this one.
