Almost 3-hour masterpiece that Leonardo DiCaprio needed acting lessons for for the first time in his career

In October, Leonardo DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese (GoodFellas) return to the big screen with Killers of the Flower Moon. Before that, you can see the dream team filming another true story. Because tonight, Arte is showing the 11-time Oscar-nominated biopic, Aviator, about a unique (and uniquely neurotic) filmmaker, aviator, and businessman.

This true story is told in Aviator

This is what Aviator (2004) focuses on eccentric multi-talent Howard Hughes (Leonardi DiCaprio), one of the most successful businessmen of his time, who made a name for himself as an aviation pioneer and film producer at the same time. The at times richest man in the world led an outward life as a playboy and adventurer in the 1920s and 30s. He has affairs with Hollywood stars like Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) and happily takes on the big names in the film industry to achieve his dreams. At the same time, the ambitious young man is struggling with an obsessive-compulsive disorder that is increasingly driving him into paranoia and loneliness.

The 170-minute film adaptation of a fact book by Charles Higham thus develops the contradictory and complex fate of a classic, self-destructive Scorsese hero. He’s kind of a relative of Jake LaMotta from the boxing drama Raging Bull or Jordan Belfort from the later Scorsese-DiCaprio film The Wolf of Wall Street.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s greatest challenge to date

Aviator was enormously complex and consumed a large budget of over 100 million dollars for a biopic. Scorsese, for example, had several real-world aircraft replicated because he wanted to avoid the kind of negative reactions the computer-generated aviators received in Michael Bay’s war film Pearl Harbor (via NBC).

The effort was also reflected in DiCaprio’s preparation. The Hollywood star faced an unprecedented challenge with the character Howard Hughes. For this reason he took acting classes for the first time in almost two decades in the industry. He studied audio recordings of Howard Hughes with legendary method acting teacher Larry Moss to find the right “vocal melody” for his performance, Moss told the Hollywood Reporter. In addition, DiCaprio invested hundreds of hours portraying Hughes’ OCD, speaking to people living with the same condition.

Leonardo DiCaprio was first nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in 2005 for his performance. 11 years later he was finally presented with the award – for his performance in The Revenant, which he had also prepared with Larry Moss.