Picking the best Leonardo DiCaprio movies means choosing between masterpieces. Few modern stars have been as selective as DiCaprio, who moved from teen idol to prestige leading man in the space of a few years and has spent most of his career working with the most ambitious directors in Hollywood. His filmography includes a sweeping disaster romance, a mind-bending Nolan blockbuster, a frontier survival epic and a series of collaborations with Martin Scorsese that rank among the richest actor and director partnerships of the era.
The ten films below are ordered by how much each one shows off what DiCaprio can do, with the strength of the movie as a whole breaking any ties. Some are epics and some are intimate, one is an outright villain turn and one is pure Shakespeare, but every pick offers a performance that rewards a first viewing and holds up on the second.
Best Leonardo DiCaprio Movies Compared by Role and Director
| # | Movie | Year | Role | Director |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Titanic | 1997 | Jack Dawson | James Cameron |
| 2 | Inception | 2010 | Dom Cobb | Christopher Nolan |
| 3 | The Departed | 2006 | Billy | Martin Scorsese |
| 4 | The Revenant | 2015 | Hugh Glass | Alejandro G. Iñárritu |
| 5 | Django Unchained | 2012 | Calvin J. Candie | Quentin Tarantino |
| 6 | Shutter Island | 2010 | Teddy Daniels | Martin Scorsese |
| 7 | The Aviator | 2004 | Howard Hughes | Martin Scorsese |
| 8 | Blood Diamond | 2006 | Danny Archer | Edward Zwick |
| 9 | Romeo + Juliet | 1996 | Romeo | Baz Luhrmann |
| 10 | Gangs of New York | 2002 | Amsterdam Vallon | Martin Scorsese |
1. Titanic (1997): The Phenomenon
A poker game on the Southampton docks hands Jack Dawson, a broke young artist, a third-class ticket aboard the most famous ship ever built. James Cameron's Titanic then sets Jack's romance with Rose DeWitt Bukater, played by Kate Winslet, against the rigid class divisions of 1912 and the disaster everyone knows is coming. Billy Zane plays Cal Hockley, Rose's arrogant fiancé, Frances Fisher plays her mother Ruth, and Kathy Bates brings warmth to the role of Molly Brown.
DiCaprio makes Jack irresistible without ever making him smug, a free spirit whose confidence feels earned rather than performed. The sketching scene, the steerage dance and the final hours in the freezing water depend entirely on his chemistry with Winslet, and that partnership is why the film still lands. Other roles have asked more of him, but none has meant more to more people, and none better captures the screen charisma that turned him into a global star almost overnight. That is why it leads the ten.
2. Inception (2010): The Mind Bender
Dom Cobb makes his living as an extractor, slipping into the dreams of powerful people to steal what they are hiding. In Christopher Nolan's Inception, the Japanese executive Saito, played by Ken Watanabe, offers Cobb a chance to clear his name and return to his children in exchange for one impossible job: planting an idea instead of stealing one. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy and Elliot Page join DiCaprio as the crew, with Marion Cotillard as Mal, the wife whose memory sabotages Cobb from within.
DiCaprio plays Cobb as a man sleepwalking through his own life, all clipped instructions and buried guilt, and that restraint is the perfect counterweight to Nolan's rotating corridors and collapsing cities. The performance gives the puzzle a beating heart: the heist matters because getting home matters. It is one of the defining science fiction movies of the century, and it ranks second because it proved he could carry an original blockbuster on sheer conviction.
3. The Departed (2006): The Undercover Cop
Billy Costigan grew up between his father's rough South Boston family and his mother's more comfortable world, and that split makes him perfect for undercover work. In The Departed, Martin Scorsese sends Billy into the crew of the mob boss Frank Costello, played by Jack Nicholson, while Costello's own informant, Colin Sullivan, played by Matt Damon, climbs the ranks of the state police. Martin Sheen plays Captain Queenan, Billy's only lifeline, and Mark Wahlberg plays the foul-mouthed Sergeant Dignam.
Billy lives in a constant state of panic, and DiCaprio makes that panic physical: twitching hands, a clenched jaw, eyes that never stop scanning the room. Every scene with Nicholson feels like a man walking on a frozen lake. The role brought a Screen Actors Guild nomination, and it marked the moment his partnership with Scorsese clicked into something special. The film is a near-perfect crime thriller, and only the sheer scale of the roles above keeps it out of the top two.
4. The Revenant (2015): The Oscar Winner
Hugh Glass is guiding a party of fur trappers through the wilderness of the 1820s when a grizzly bear tears him apart. In Alejandro G. Iñárritu's The Revenant, his companion John Fitzgerald, played by Tom Hardy, murders Glass's son Hawk, played by Forrest Goodluck, and leaves the wounded man to die. What follows is a brutal odyssey of survival through ice, rivers and hostile territory. Domhnall Gleeson plays Captain Andrew Henry, the expedition's leader, and Will Poulter plays the young Jim Bridger.
With few lines to work with, DiCaprio communicates almost everything through his body, his breathing and his eyes, turning Glass into a figure of pure will. The performance finally brought him the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2016, along with the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a drama and the BAFTA for Best Actor. Some viewers will find the film more punishing than moving, which keeps it fourth, but as a feat of commitment it stands alone in his career.
5. Django Unchained (2012): The Villain
Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained follows Django, a freed slave played by Jamie Foxx, and Dr. King Schultz, a German bounty hunter played by Christoph Waltz, as they search for Django's wife Broomhilda, played by Kerry Washington. The trail leads to Candyland, the Mississippi plantation of Calvin J. Candie, the role DiCaprio plays. Candie is a pampered, vicious slaveholder who entertains himself with fights to the death, while his house servant Stephen, played by Samuel L. Jackson, watches every guest with suspicion.
Candie is the most monstrous character DiCaprio has ever played, and he attacks the part with terrifying relish. Candie is charming, childish and cruel in equal measure, and the long dinner sequence in which his hospitality curdles into menace is the tensest stretch of the film. The role earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Its place in the top five reflects how completely he abandoned his leading-man image, even if the film itself sprawls.
6. Shutter Island (2010): The Puzzle Box
Two federal marshals ride a ferry across gray water to an asylum on an island off Boston, and from the first shot of Shutter Island something feels wrong. Martin Scorsese's thriller follows Teddy Daniels, DiCaprio's character, as he searches for a missing patient, aided by his partner Chuck, played by Mark Ruffalo, and obstructed by the hospital's polished chief psychiatrist, played by Ben Kingsley. Max von Sydow plays another doctor, and Michelle Williams appears in visions as Dolores, Teddy's dead wife.
DiCaprio pitches Teddy at a fever level from the start: sweating, smoking and wounded by memories of the war. On a first viewing that intensity reads as a detective's obsession, and on a second it reveals something far sadder. That double layer is the real achievement. The film's gothic machinery sometimes overwhelms the drama, which keeps it in the middle of the ten, but the closing moments contain some of the finest acting he has done for Scorsese.
7. The Aviator (2004): The Biopic
The Aviator covers two decades in the life of Howard Hughes, the young millionaire who poured his fortune into Hollywood epics and record-breaking aircraft while slowly losing ground to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Scorsese's biography moves from film sets and nightclubs to test flights and a bruising Senate hearing. Cate Blanchett plays Katharine Hepburn, Kate Beckinsale plays Ava Gardner, John C. Reilly plays Hughes's loyal executive Noah Dietrich, and Alec Baldwin plays his airline rival Juan Trippe.
DiCaprio gives Hughes the swagger of a showman and then lets the walls close in, scene by scene, until the man is trapped inside his own compulsions, repeating the same phrase over and over. It is a showy role played with real discipline. The performance won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a drama and brought Academy Award, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild nominations. It sits seventh only because the film's sheer length dilutes its strongest passages.
8. Blood Diamond (2006): The Mercenary
Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond is set in Sierra Leone during its civil war at the end of the 1990s. DiCaprio plays Danny Archer, a smuggler and former soldier from Rhodesia who trades weapons for diamonds. When he learns that a fisherman named Solomon Vandy, played by Djimon Hounsou, has hidden a huge pink stone, Archer offers to help Solomon find his kidnapped son in exchange for the gem. Jennifer Connelly plays Maddy Bowen, an American journalist investigating the trade.
Archer is a cynic who sees everyone as a deal, and DiCaprio commits to his rough edges, his accent and his self-loathing, making the character's late turn toward decency feel hard-won. His partnership with Hounsou drives the film. It earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and a Golden Globe nomination, and it showed that he could lead an action thriller with a conscience. The film's heavy-handed messaging is what holds it at number eight.
9. Romeo + Juliet (1996): The Romantic
Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet keeps Shakespeare's original verse but moves the story to Verona Beach, a sun-baked modern city where the Montague and Capulet boys carry pistols and drive sports cars. DiCaprio plays Romeo, a lovesick young man who meets Juliet, played by Claire Danes, through the glass of an aquarium at her family's costume party. Brian Dennehy plays his father Ted Montague, and Vondie Curtis-Hall plays the police captain trying to keep the city's feuding families apart.
DiCaprio speaks the verse as if he were improvising it, which is exactly why the film works for audiences who have never cared for Shakespeare. He plays Romeo as impulsive, moody and utterly sincere, and his scenes with Danes have a giddy, breathless quality. Released the year before Titanic, it made him a teen idol, and it remains one of the boldest romance movies of the 1990s. Its frantic style keeps it ninth.
10. Gangs of New York (2002): The Avenger
Gangs of New York opens with a battle in the snow in the Five Points slum of Manhattan, where the young Amsterdam Vallon watches his father die at the hands of Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting. Years later, Amsterdam returns as a grown man, played by DiCaprio, and worms his way into Bill's inner circle while planning his revenge. Daniel Day-Lewis plays the Butcher, Cameron Diaz plays the pickpocket Jenny Everdeane, and Jim Broadbent plays the corrupt political boss William Tweed.
It was DiCaprio's first film with Scorsese, and he holds his own as a brooding, watchful hero opposite one of the most ferocious performances of the decade. Day-Lewis dominates the screen, which is the main reason the film rounds out the ten, but the father and son dynamic between Bill and Amsterdam is gripping. More importantly, it launched the partnership that would produce several of his best performances, including The Aviator, The Departed and Shutter Island.
Leonardo DiCaprio's Awards, Film by Film
His trophy shelf took a long time to fill. These are his major Academy Award and Golden Globe results, in the order they came.
- What's Eating Gilbert Grape: Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 1994 ceremony, for his role as Arnie Grape.
- The Aviator: Golden Globe win for Best Actor in a drama in 2005, plus an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
- Blood Diamond: Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and a Golden Globe nomination.
- Django Unchained: Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
- The Wolf of Wall Street: Golden Globe win for Best Actor in a musical or comedy in 2014, plus Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and, as a producer, Best Picture.
- The Revenant: Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA wins for Best Actor in 2016.
- Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood: Academy Award nomination for Best Actor at the 2020 ceremony.
The long wait for his Oscar became part of his public story, which is why the win for The Revenant felt like the end of a chapter rather than a single award.
Seen the Top 10? Watch These DiCaprio Films Next
- The Wolf of Wall Street (2013): A wild, comic Scorsese epic with DiCaprio as the corrupt stockbroker Jordan Belfort.
- Catch Me If You Can (2002): Steven Spielberg's breezy chase film, with DiCaprio as the teenage forger Frank Abagnale Jr. and Tom Hanks as the agent chasing him.
- Killers of the Flower Moon (2023): He plays Ernest Burkhart, a weak man drawn into the murders of Osage people in 1920s Oklahoma.
- Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019): Tarantino's nostalgic portrait of 1969 Los Angeles, with DiCaprio as the fading TV cowboy Rick Dalton.
- The Man in the Iron Mask (1998): A swashbuckler in which he plays King Louis XIV and his secret twin brother Philippe.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Leonardo DiCaprio movie won him the Oscar?
The Revenant. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the frontiersman Hugh Glass at the 2016 ceremony.
Has Leonardo DiCaprio ever played a villain?
Yes. His role as the slaveholder Calvin J. Candie in Django Unchained is his best-known villain, and it earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
Which Leonardo DiCaprio movies are romances?
Titanic and Romeo + Juliet are his signature romances, and Revolutionary Road reunited him with Kate Winslet for a darker look at marriage.
What was Leonardo DiCaprio's first film with Martin Scorsese?
Gangs of New York (2002), in which he played Amsterdam Vallon opposite Daniel Day-Lewis.
