Leonardo DiCaprio

Born: November 11 1974
Where: Hollywood, California, USA

The actor will be forever associated with the role of Jack Dawson in Titanic - the most successful movie of all time with eleven Oscars to its name.

Although never winning an Academy Award, DiCaprio has been nominated twice for What's Eating Gilbert Grape and The Aviator.

The latter was the second in a run of films directed by the legendary director Martin Scorsese which reached a high with the gangster drama The Departed.

The son of a comic books distributor and a legal secretary, his mother reportedly named him after feeling him kick in her womb while standing in front of a painting by Leonardo De Vinci.

His parents divorced when he was one year old and he was raised in the tough Los Angeles neighbourhood of of Echo Park.

The young DiCaprio's first claim was when he was almost kicked off the set of the TV series Romper Room aged five for misbehaving.

His career proper got off to a false start when he was rejected by an agent because his name sounded too foreign, suggesting he change to Lenny Williams. He refused.

He made his TV debut in 1989 as Garry Buckman on the TV version of the hit film Parenthood, where he met his best friend Tobey Maguire.

The same year he appeared in the soap opera Santa Barbara as Mason Capwell (in flashbacks as a teenager) and from 1991 to 1992 he had the role of Luke Brower, a homeless boy, on Growing Pains.

DiCaprio made his big screen debut in 1991 as Josh in Critters 3 and made his break through two years later with the role of Toby in This Boy's Life, co-starring Robert De Niro and Ellen Barkin.

In the same year he also convincingly portrayed a mentally handicapped boy alongside Johnny Depp in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, a performance which earned him an Academy Award nomination at the age of 19.

In 1996, DiCaprio played the male lead in Romeo + Juliet, a slick, contemporary version of Shakespeare's play, directed by Australian director Baz Luhrmann.

The following year he was catapulted into the Hollywood firmament when he was cast by James Cameron in the watery blockbuster Titanic, the highest grossing movie in history.

The period of "Leo-mania" had begun and he even agreed to play the spoof role of his real life 'teen idol' persona in Woody Allen's satirical parody Celebrity.

At the same time, DiCaprio sued Playgirl magazine to stop it publishing unauthorized nude photos of him in its July 1998 issue.

DiCaprio's next project - Danny Boyle's backpacker thriller The Beach - proved to be a disappointment that wasn't helped by allegations the film-makers were damaging the natural environment during filming.

He fared better with Steven Spielberg's entertaining Catch Me If You Can as an enterprising conman and in Martin Scorsese's mobster caper Gangs of New York in 2002.

Sticking with Scorsese, he was cast as eccentic multimillionaire Howard Hughes in the biopic The Aviator alongside Cate Blanchett in 2004.

Recent work includes Scorsese's reworking of Infernal Affairs with DiCaprio as a cop sent undercover in Jack Nicholson's gang of Boston mobsters.

In 2007, he played Danny Archer, a mercenary in search of a rare pink gem in the thriller Blood Diamond.