20022007: Critical acclaim

DiCaprio at the pre-premiere of Gangs of New York at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
DiCaprio's first film of 2002 was the biographical crime drama film Catch Me If You Can, based
on the life of Frank Abagnale Jr., who, before his 19th birthday, used his charm, confidence, and
several different personas, to make millions in the 1960s writing bad checks. Directed by Steven
Spielberg, the film was shot in 147 different locations in only 52 days, making it "the most
adventurous, super-charged movie-making" DiCaprio had experienced yet.
[37]
Catch Me If You
Can received favourable reviews and proved to be an international success, becoming Dicaprio's
highest-grossing film since Titanic with a total of US$351.1 million worldwide.
[38]
Roger
Ebert praised his performance, and noted that while "DiCaprio, who in recent films [...] has
played dark and troubled characters, is breezy and charming here, playing a boy who discovers
what he is good at, and does it."
[39]
The following year, DiCaprio received his third Golden Globe
nomination for his work on the film.
Also in 2002, DiCaprio appeared in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, a historical film set in
the mid-19th century in the Five Points district of New York City. Director Scorsese initially
struggled selling his idea of realizing the film until DiCaprio became interested in playing
protagonist Amsterdam Vallon, a young leader of the Irish faction, and thus, Miramax Films got
involved with financing the project.
[40]
Nonetheless production on the film was plagued by blown-
out budgets and producer-director squabbles, resulting in a marathon eight-month shoot and, at
US$103 million, the most expensive film Scorsese had ever made.
[40]
Upon its release, Gangs of
New York became a financial and critical success however.
[41]
DiCaprio's acting was well-received
but remained overshadowed by Daniel Day-Lewis' performance among most critics.
[40][42]


DiCaprio at the red carpet at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
Forging a collaboration with Scorsese, the two paired again for a biopic of the eccentric and
obsessive American film director and aviation pioneerHoward Hughes in The Aviator (2004).
Centering on Hughes' life from the late 1920s to 1947, DiCaprio initially developed the project
with Michael Mann, who decided against directing it after back-to-back film biographies
in Ali and The Insider.
[42]
The actor eventually pitched John Logan's script to Scorsese, who
quickly signed on to direct. Altogether, DiCaprio reportedly spent more than a year and a half in
preparation for the film which was not necessarily shot in continuity because of actors and
locations schedules.
[42]
The Aviator became a critical and financial success.
[43]
DiCaprio received
rave reviews for his performance and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, also receiving
another Academy Award nomination.
In 2006, DiCaprio starred in both Blood Diamond and The Departed. In Edward Zwick's war
film Blood Diamond, he starred as a diamond smuggler from Rhodesia who is involved in
the Sierra Leone Civil War. The film itself received generally favorable reviews,
[44]
and DiCaprio
was praised for the authenticity of his South African Afrikaner accent, known as a difficult accent
to imitate.
[45]
In Scorsese's The Departed he played the role of Billy Costigan, a state trooper
working undercover in an Irish Mob in Boston. Highly anticipated, the film was released to
overwhelmingly positive reviews and became one of the highest-rated wide release films of
2006.
[46]
Budgeted at US$90 million, it also emerged as DiCaprio and Scorsese's highest-
grossing collaboration to date, easily beating The Aviators previous record of US$213.7
million.
[47]
DiCaprio's performance in The Departed was applauded by critics and earned him
a Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor. The same year, both the Golden Globes and
the Screen Actors Guild nominated DiCaprio twice in the Best Actor category for both of his 2006
features, and in addition, DiCaprio earned his third Academy Award nomination for Blood
Diamond.