In The Swim Again
A visit with Leonardo DiCaprio as he makes his new movie, The Beach, and it makes waves
By JEFFREY RESSNER Khao Yai
Leonardo DiCaprio is fully dressed, shivering and gurgling in a large pool of icy-cold water and ... wait a second, isn't this where we left off? Not quite. This time the 24-year-old Titanic star--the world's most famous young leading man--is submerged beneath a gushing waterfall in Thailand's Khao Yai National Park, an immense forest reserve crawling with tigers, leopards, elephants and pythons. A doctor also warns of leeches: real ones, not the Hollywood type. But it's 1999, not 1997, and there's more than just dangerous wildlife surrounding DiCaprio these days. His entire world has been saturated with changes since the last time he dunked in the line of duty.
Wherever DiCaprio now goes, at least one or two bodyguards are no more than an arm's length away. Groups of Asian teenage girls shadow his every move; a blond European stalker in hot pants even showed up uninvited at his hotel-room door. And unlike the controversies during the making of Titanic, where the heat was on director James Cameron for a runaway budget, this time around DiCaprio finds himself in the crossfire of a hostile debate over environmental problems allegedly caused by the filming of his new movie, The Beach.
The film is based on British writer Alex Garland's acclaimed novel about a remote island paradise settled by a commune of world travelers, with disastrous results. Local environmentalists claim the landscape has been just as disastrously damaged by the film crew. DiCaprio has been an irresistible target of criticism from some media-savvy Thai activists and newspapers (the more artsy protesters performed skits in Leo masks decorated with fangs dripping blood), and the actor complains that he's been unjustly painted as an ecovillain. "It's a stab on my reputation if I'm associated with a film that comes in and recklessly destroys things," he grumbles, looking newly tanned and nearly buff in his trailer before taking a watery plunge.
In an effort to show good faith, DiCaprio has issued spin-control statements, done photo ops with Buddhist monks and praised the quality of Thai cuisine. Still, the controversy rages on. Daily Thai tabloids--as pesky as any in the U.S.--print reports that he has gotten his female co-star pregnant (although amused, she denies it), that he's been rude to young fans and that he's so paranoid about being poisoned that he's hired food tasters. "This is something I probably have to get used to--lies culminating in something much more hysterical and out of hand," he says, laughing nervously.
The ongoing ecology debate is only one of the challenges that the actor is having to face as he undertakes to carry his first movie alone as a major star. On a particular day in early February, for example, some of the friends who regularly travel with DiCaprio are missing in the park, and one of the star's brawny bodyguards frantically screams out their names while searching for them; they're eventually found unharmed. During another crazed moment, about a dozen save-the-forest protesters attempt to rush onto the set but are held back by armed officials. Meanwhile, studio executives from 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles are on the phone constantly nagging the producer to lobby DiCaprio to wear Puma sandals for a product-placement plug.
What makes all this tolerable for DiCaprio and his colleagues is the opportunity to bring The Beach to the screen. It is the story of an aimless traveler named Richard who gets a map leading to a secret beach where a post-hippie community uneasily shares its Eden with treacherous, dope-growing Thai farmers. Some critics described the novel as Lord of the Flies for Generation X. Though it sold a scant 17,000 copies in the U.S., it proved a cult hit in Britain and Thailand. Soon after it was published in 1996, British director Danny Boyle picked up a copy and was immediately captivated.
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