Leonardo DiCaprio to Portray Leonardo Da Vinci in New Film With Paramount

By Vianne Ilagan, Christian Post Contributor Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Throughout his acting career, "Titanic" star Leonardo DiCaprio has been known for portraying real people in films. Now, the actor is at it again, as Paramount Pictures has tapped him to play renowned painter and his namesake, Leonardo Da Vinci.

The Oscar-winning actor will portray one of the most famed intellectuals of the Italian Renaissance in an upcoming biopic by Paramount, which will be based on a biography by Walter Isaacson that is set for release soon. According to reports, the bidding battle between Paramount and Universal Studios over the upcoming biography was won by the former for an amount totaling seven figures.

The upcoming biopic will be the ninth time that DiCaprio has portrayed a real person. One of his earliest films was "This Boy's Life," where he was the young Tobias Wolff. He also played renowned musician and poet Jim Carroll in "The Basketball Diaries" as well as gay poet Arthur Rimbaud in "Total Eclipse."

In his recent film "The Revenant," DiCaprio was highly praised for his stellar portrayal of frontiersman Hugh Glass. In the past, he also played billionaire Howard Hughes, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, criminal Jordan Belfort and con artist Frank Abagnale Jr.

Meanwhile, his upcoming biopic with Paramount is a dream-come-true for DiCaprio. Recently, the actor's mother revealed that her son had always wanted to play the artist. In fact, when she was still pregnant with the actor, she would look at one of Da Vinci's paintings and she would feel DiCaprio kicking so hard inside her tummy.

DiCaprio's Appian Way Productions will co-produce the upcoming film with president of production Jennifer Davisson. The biography of Da Vinci was written by "Steve Jobs" author Isaacson and will be released on Oct. 17 of this year.

Da Vinci, who was born in 1452 and died in 1519, is not only known for his paintings of "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper," but for also being a gifted inventor.