He’s one of the best method actors in the world, but Leonardo DiCaprio still needed some help from the real 'Wolf of Wall Street' to prepare for the infamous Quaalude scene in the 2013 film.
As part of his work for The Wolf of Wall Street, DiCaprio was taught by Jordan Belfort about the banned drug and it’s, umm, effects.
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The pair even crawled around the floor together, much to the shock of the actor’s family.
Belfort had been helping DiCaprio prepare his starring role in the biopic about his own life and criminal past, when things took a bizarre turn.
Having never taken Quaaludes, which a depressant similar to Valium, DiCaprio was unsure how to approach the scene - which is when the former stockbroker decided to help him well and truly get into character.
Much like in the movie, the fraudster began drooling crawling around on the floor explaining how the real-life incident had played out.
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"I showed him what it looks and feels like when you are high on quaaludes," Belfort said, telling The New York Post: "I... started crawling around. We were both on the floor, drooling.
"His father walked into the room and asked us what the f**k we were doing."
Hilariously, DiCaprio later confirmed the story, jokingly calling it part of ‘the lost Jordan tapes’ in an interview with The Daily Mail in 2014.
"He crawled around the floor to re-enact the stages of getting high. He wasn't the greatest actor, but he certainly gave me the inspiration," the Revenant actor admitted, as he retold the story.
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However, DiCaprio wasn’t the only actor with issues with the film’s extensive drug depiction.
Actor Jonah Hill, who played sleazy stockbroker Donnie Azoff, snorted so much fake cocaine during the production of the 2012 film, that he was hospitalised with bronchitis shortly afterwards.
"If you ingest that much matter into your lungs you’ll get very sick, and we were literally doing fake coke for, like, seven months, every day," he told press, adding that he’d take so much vitamin D powder (which doubled for the drug) that he joking that he thought he could have ‘lifted a car’ over his head.
Even Margot Robbie had an awful time during that shoot, revealing that it painful to snort and she struggled with using herbal cigarettes during production of her latest film, Babylon.
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“So I’ve never smoked a real cigarette but I was chain smoking these fake cigarettes that don’t have any nicotine, they’re herbal cigarettes. They smell terrible and taste awful," she admitted during the press tour.
While it may have been intense for the star, it was certainly worth it as The Wolf of Wall was one of the biggest grossing films of the year, with endless awards and the movie becoming an instant classic.
We guess you have to suffer for art.
Topics: Margot Robbie, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, TV and Film, Celebrity
Katherine Sidnell