{"id":158168,"date":"2025-09-24T20:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T20:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/158168\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T20:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T20:28:07","slug":"leonardo-dicaprio-almost-went-by-this-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/158168\/","title":{"rendered":"Leonardo DiCaprio Almost Went By This Name"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Once\u00a0Upon\u00a0a\u00a0Time in Hollywood,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/urldefense.com\/v3\/__https:\/www.eonline.com\/news\/leonardo_dicaprio__;!!HqJSLGM!oq0x8fgrLrPthKEdvU9imrq7M9mGzJT3bTzkdDYZjOodRooe3dyAmFoa8P75j9BJqxZQJY-_mY1SLWZvnGVIsIKKjoz3-HKIU5k$\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Leonardo DiCaprio<\/a>\u00a0almost went by a different name.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the Oscar winner almost followed in the Hollywood tradition of swapping out his given name for a stage moniker.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI finally\u00a0got an agent. They said, \u2018Your name is too ethnic,\u2019 Leonardo\u00a0said while appearing on the Sept. 24 episode of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/urldefense.com\/v3\/__https:\/www.eonline.com\/news\/travis_kelce__;!!HqJSLGM!oq0x8fgrLrPthKEdvU9imrq7M9mGzJT3bTzkdDYZjOodRooe3dyAmFoa8P75j9BJqxZQJY-_mY1SLWZvnGVIsIKKjoz38WbReYE$\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Travis Kelce<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/urldefense.com\/v3\/__https:\/www.eonline.com\/news\/jason_kelce__;!!HqJSLGM!oq0x8fgrLrPthKEdvU9imrq7M9mGzJT3bTzkdDYZjOodRooe3dyAmFoa8P75j9BJqxZQJY-_mY1SLWZvnGVIsIKKjoz3VjFJhGU$\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jason Kelce<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/urldefense.com\/v3\/__https:\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AOHXxaah38o__;!!HqJSLGM!oq0x8fgrLrPthKEdvU9imrq7M9mGzJT3bTzkdDYZjOodRooe3dyAmFoa8P75j9BJqxZQJY-_mY1SLWZvnGVIsIKKjoz3zmnE7eQ$\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New Heights<\/a>\u00a0alongside\u00a0Benicio Del Toro.\u00a0\u201cI go, \u2018What do you mean? It\u2019s Leonardo DiCaprio.\u2019 They go, \u2018No, too ethnic. They\u2019re never gonna hire you. Your new name is\u00a0Lenny\u00a0Williams.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The 50-year-old explained that he was around 12 or 13 when his agent suggested the name change, and that the proposed new last name came from his middle name Wilhelm.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>His father\u00a0George DiCaprio, however, did not share the same sentiment, with Leonardo adding,\u00a0\u201cMy dad saw his photo, ripped it up, and he said, \u2018Over my dead body.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once\u00a0Upon\u00a0a\u00a0Time in Hollywood,\u00a0Leonardo DiCaprio\u00a0almost went by a different name.\u00a0 Indeed, the Oscar winner almost followed in the Hollywood&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-158168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}