Saturday Matinee: Romeo + Juliet starring the real Leonardo DiCaprio #book2movies

Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet at 21

Have you seen the images of Leonardo DiCaprio’s doppelganger going around? He’s a 21 year old Swedish bartender/musician/model named Konrad Annerud (@Konrad_Annerud) who looks a lot like Leo back in the day.

This is Konrad Annerud. 

Looking a bit like Leo is not the same as being Leo.

This is what being Leo looks like.

DiCaprio, who turns forty one in a couple of weeks, was just twenty one himself when Baz Luhrman cast him in Romeo + Juliet. Claire Danes was his 17 year old Juliet.

 Roger Ebert hated it. HATED it. Gave it just two stars and said he’d never “seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of “Romeo & Juliet” makes of Shakespeare’s tragedy.” Well, we know anything by Baz Luhrman is going to be controversial. Some of us loved his Great Gatsby, others not so much. Ditto with Moulin Rouge. His unconventional approach really bothers the purists, but not Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. He adored the 1996 film.

“These babes from the TV woods — he started in Growing Pains; she emerged in My So--Called Life — fill their classic roles with vital passion, speak the Elizabethan verse with unforced grace, find the spirited comedy of the play without losing its tragic fervor and keep their balance when the audacious Australian director Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom) hurls them into a whirlwind of hardball action, rowdy humor and rapturous romance.” 

Guess what? I’ve never seen it. So that’s my Saturday Matinee. Romeo + Juliet. And you, want to watch it with me?

Republished on the occasion of Baz Luhrmann 54th birthday. 9/16/2016