Leonardo DiCaprio Told Us His Biggest Regret: Turning Down <em>Boogie Nights</em>

An actor with such a high hit rate as Leonardo DiCaprio couldn’t possibly have any regrets, right? The man starred in Titanic, Inception, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Aviator, The Departed, and worked will nearly every major director at the height of their careers. He even finally won an Academy Award in 2016 after fighting a bear in The Revenant. So, what in DiCaprio’s illustrious career could the actor possibly look back on and wish that he had done differently?

“My biggest regret is not doing Boogie Nights,” DiCaprio tells director Paul Thomas Anderson in Esquire’s latest cover story. The actor turned down Anderson’s 1997 porn-star drama after starring in The Basketball Diaries because it conflicted with his role in James Cameron’s Titanic. So, DiCaprio recommended that his Diaries co-star Mark Wahlberg take the lead role in Boogie Nights. However, he later admitted that he should have figured out how to star in both.

“It was a profound movie of my generation,” DiCaprio explains. “I can’t imagine anyone but Mark in it. When I finally got to see that movie, I just thought it was a masterpiece. It’s ironic that you’re the person asking that question, but it’s true.”

Now, twenty-eight years after Boogie Nights, DiCaprio and Anderson are finally working together on a new film titled One Battle After Another. From the trailer—and the two filmmakers’ description in Esquire’s cover story—it sounds like Anderson’s first true action film complete with car chases, gun fights, and an emotional father-daughter story. You can read the full interview here.

“It was a personal story for you in a lot of ways and certainly pertinent to the world that we’re living in right now,” DiCaprio tells Anderson. “Ultimately, wanting to do this movie was pretty simple: I’ve been wanting to work with you—Paul—for something like twenty years now, and I loved this idea.”

“It’s about the disconnection between generations,” he continues. “It’s about how this daughter and father relate to one another, and that we are living in a completely different world than the next generation. We think we understand it, but we don’t.”

One Battle After Another is in theaters on September 26.