From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell.

Leonardo DiCaprio has played more downward spiral real-life figures than anybody I can think of, from Frank and Catch Me if you can, to Jim Carroll in the Basketball Diaries, to Howard Hughes and the Aviator in his newest film.

He is Jordan Belfort and the Wolf of Wall Street. Leo, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. I'm glad to do the show. What attracts you to these guys? So I mean, I think about these,

so many of the real life figures you play, though, have been, even Rambo in Total Eclipse.

There are all these guys who are on this path, they kind of can't stop. You know, I think that we're all beholden to a certain time period in our life where we're incredibly affected by art and I think you know

when I was 15 years old and I and I got the opportunity to do this boy's life with with

De Niro I kind of needed to catch up on all of cinema's history you know and I'd done traditionally

television to that point and so my father was very intricate

and introducing me to specific films. And of course, I became fascinated by, you know, the 70s

era, the director's era of making movies. And certainly Scorsese's early work with taxi driver

east of Eden was another very influential film.

Those were the things that moved me at a very young age.

I had a profound reaction to them.

And since then, once you catch that bug,

it's this addiction of trying to emulate something that good in your lifetime.

And I don't think that's ever something

that's quenched as an artist. You always compare to the gods before you and you say, well, it's never

that good. I can never be that good. So it keeps driving you forward. And I've never, I don't think as an

actor, really questioned why I want to play a role. I read a script and I sit

with it and if it still speaks to me, you know, weeks or months afterwards, I know it's something

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