{"id":69730,"date":"2025-08-14T19:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T19:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/69730\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T19:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T19:17:08","slug":"titanic-star-leonardo-dicaprio-reveals-his-biggest-career-regret-not-doing-boogie-nights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/69730\/","title":{"rendered":"Titanic Star Leonardo DiCaprio Reveals His Biggest Career Regret: Not Doing Boogie Nights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Leonardo DiCaprio is a Hollywood legend with scores of blockbuster films under his belt. Titanic, Inception, The Revenant, Django Unchained\u2026 the list goes on. Still, the actor has career regrets, and he\u2019s now revealed the biggest one: not doing Boogie Nights.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">1997\u2019s Boogie Nights, from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, tells the story of a young nightclub dishwasher who becomes a porn star called Dirk Diggler in 1970s Los Angeles. It is one of Transformers star Mark Wahlberg\u2019s most iconic roles, but it was originally intended for Leonardo DiCaprio after Anderson saw him in The Basketball Diaries. DiCaprio, who had to turn the role down because he had signed on to star in James Cameron&#8217;s Titanic, recommended his The Basketball Diaries co-star Mark Wahlberg for the role instead. The rest is history.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/assets-prd.ignimgs.com\/2025\/08\/14\/gettyimages-1192757358-1755171497701.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img alt=\"null\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"progressive-image article-image article-image-full-size jsx-1809694635 jsx-2338608387\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\" data-cy=\"progressive-image\"\/><\/a>Leonardo DiCaprio chose Titanic over Boogie Nights, and the rest is history. Photo by CBS via Getty Images.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">DiCaprio has spoken about wishing he&#8217;d been able to do both Boogie Nights and Titanic in the past. Now, in a just-published conversation between Paul Thomas Anderson and DiCaprio himself in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/movies\/a65619469\/leonardo-dicaprio-paul-thomas-anderson-interview-2025\/\" class=\"link jsx-1337145738 jsx-3925284146 underlined\" data-cy=\"styled-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Esquire<\/a>, he called not doing Boogie Nights his biggest regret.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">\u201cI\u2019ll say it even though you\u2019re here: my biggest regret is not doing Boogie Nights,\u201d DiCaprio told Anderson. \u201cIt was a profound movie of my generation. I can\u2019t imagine anyone but Mark [Wahlberg] in it. When I finally got to see that movie, I just thought it was a masterpiece. It\u2019s ironic that you\u2019re the person asking that question, but it\u2019s true.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">In a 2008 interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gq.com\/story\/leonardo-dicaprio-revolutionary-road-kate-winslet\" class=\"link jsx-1337145738 jsx-3925284146 underlined\" data-cy=\"styled-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">GQ<\/a>, DiCaprio was asked whether he would pick Boogie Nights over Titanic, could he go back and make the decision again.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">\u201cI&#8217;m not saying I would have,\u201d he replied. \u201cBut it would have been a different direction, careerwise. I think they&#8217;re both great and wish I could have done them both.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">DiCaprio continued: \u201cI would have been happy to do them both. And the truth is, if I&#8217;d not done Titanic, I wouldn&#8217;t be able to do the types of movies or have the career I have now, for sure. But it would have been interesting to see if I had gone the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">After Titanic came out and set the box office alight, DiCaprio starred in the likes of The Beach, Gangs of New York, Catch Me If You Can, The Aviator, and many more movies. He is set to appear in One Battle After Another, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, in September.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Photo by CBS via Getty Images.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leonardo DiCaprio is a Hollywood legend with scores of blockbuster films under his belt. Titanic, Inception, The Revenant,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-69730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}