Leonardo DiCaprio On His Post-‘Titanic’ Youth: ‘I Got To Be Wild & Nuts’

After starring in 1997’s box office-topping “Titanic,” Leonardo DiCaprio became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars – an opportunity, he told the August 5 issue of Rolling Stone, that he didn’t waste.

“I got to be wild and nuts, and I didn’t suffer as much as people do now, where they have to play it so safe that they ruin their credibility,” the “Inception” star told the mag. “I didn’t care what anyone thought.”

However, Leo was quick to add that he didn’t push too far into Hollywood’s dark side.

“It was also about avoiding the tornado of chaos, of potential downfall,” he said. “My two main competitors in the beginning, the blond-haired kids I went to audition with, one hung himself and the other died of a heroin overdose… I was never into drugs at all. There aren’t stories of me in a pool of my own vomit in a hotel room on the Hollywood Strip.”

Leo may have dated some of the world’s most desirable women, including Gisele Bundchen and his current girlfriend, supermodel Bar Refaeli, but he said his “Titanic” stardom often got in the way of his romantic life.

“I had better success meeting girls before ‘Titanic,’” he told the mag. “My interactions with them didn’t have all the stigma behind it, not to mention there wasn’t a perception of her talking to me for only one reason.”

He compared the experience to another of “Titanic” director James Cameron’s movies – “Avatar,” the film that broke “Titanic’s” box office record.

“It was like there was a separate entity out there,” Leo said of what his life was like – and what people thought of him following the blockbuster that turned him into a superstar. “Not to use a James Cameron reference, but it was like being in a little bit of an avatar.”

“That’s going to sound extremely self- indulgent,” he self-deprecatingly continued. “It’s going to sound like, ‘Oh, I was a frickin’ avatar,’ give me a break, I’m already vomiting.”