Leonardo DiCaprio Quotes

I came from a real working-class show business family.

I was raised in Hollywood and knew, from as early as grammar school, classmates who were in the business.

I used to do skits for my mom... and I was always entertaining as a kid.

I've loved musical theater ever since I was a kid. My mother's a pianist, and my grandfather was an amateur theater director and stand-up comic. And I was an only child. And I loved attention. So from an early age, my family was teaching old musical songs.

I guess I was always a ham, and I was anxious to try doing different things. I started doing impressions to make friends at school. I would do them during recess. Maybe some of the kids thought I was being weird, but everyone seemed to have a good time.

A lot of my family members were performers, and my cousins are comedians and actresses. From a very young age, movies were really important. They were given a lot of value.

My father was an entertainer, and he knew what he was doing.

My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties.

My nana was an actress, my mom was an actress, and my sister, too. So because I was surrounded by it, it really came naturally.

My dad's a lighting director. Growing up in Hollywood, I was around the entertainment industry all the time. I knew I'd end up in show business in some capacity, eventually.

I was embarrassed that I even wanted to become an actress because coming from L.A., with two older sisters in the business and a mom who had been a ballet dancer, it was such a cliche.

When I was 9, I asked my mom if I could be on TV. She was like, 'Well, okay. You can try.'

As a kid, I was a dancer in Dick Whittington, Snow White and Cinderella. When I was 14, I played Baby Bear. I had a big head on, and you couldn't see my face. My mum was very disappointed.

No, like I said, my dad was never really part of the tennis. His involvement around what I did with the tennis and with my mom and my grandparents was really not a part of my life.

I could do John Wayne, Jack Benny, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and entertain my friends. But I never seriously considered it as a career choice.

My family is not at all involved in television, or film, or theatre, or any of it, really.

When I was little, my mom was an actress, and she still is now, and she'd go on commercial auditions, and if they needed a mom and a son, she'd take me along, and that's how I got started.

Growing up, I listened and was influenced by a lot of those around me. I have a big family, and my dad listened to '80s music, my mom listened to Motown, my brother listened to reggae, and my granddad was the one that got me into jazz and swing music.

Look, everything that you experience as a kid is the foundation of how you are today. I was brought up in a working class family in Leeds and when it comes to money both my parents worked hard and instilled the same attitude into me.

My dad is a successful television producer, director and writer, and my mom's a director and writer. Even when I was young, I wanted to be an actress.

I told my agents that I didn't want to go on the audition. But as that was happening I called my mom, who has been watching the show from the beginning, and my mom said, 'It's the coolest show. You have to go.'

My Mother is an actress, so it's always been a part of my life.

My mom always liked the idea of us acting - me and my sister - like, one of us trying it. But my dad always thought it was a joke.

I grew up with my parents in the kitchen discussing the audition my dad had that day or moaning about something or other in the industry, so it was unglamourised and normalised for me from a very young age.

I feel like I've been the star of my own show for a while now. I was always putting on shows as a kid, and obviously, my household was really creative.