Leonardo DiCaprio Shares Name Change Request By Agent

Leonardo DiCaprio would’ve been an Oscar-winning actor with a totally different name, if one agent had his way.

“The Departed” actor spoke about the almost-name change on Jason and Travis Kelce’s podcast, “New Heights.”

“I finally got an agent. They said, ‘Your name is too ethnic,’” DiCaprio said on the episode, released on Wednesday. “I go, ‘What do you mean? It’s Leonardo DiCaprio.’ They go, ‘No, too ethnic. They’re never going to hire you. Your new name is Lenny Williams.’”

“I said, ‘What is Lenny?’ I was 12,13. I said, ‘What is Lenny Williams?’ ‘We took your middle name and we made it. Now you’re Lenny,’” he recalled the agent saying. (DiCaprio’s full name is Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio.)

Luckily, the actor said things never moved forward with “Lenny” as his father saw a headshot with DiCaprio’s new name on it and “ripped it up.”

“He said, ‘Over my dead body,’” DiCaprio recalled.

DiCaprio appeared on the podcast alongside his “One Battle After Another” co-star, Benicio del Toro, who said the same thing happened to him.

“I was told the same thing. ‘You’re Benny Del,’” del Toro said, “Mr. Del.”

Others in Hollywood have spoken about the pressures from others to change their name, including singer Christina Aguilera.

“I remember when I was first coming up, there was a big debate around me on changing my last name because all the businessmen around me thought it was too long, too complicated, and too ethnic,” the singer told Billboard back in 2020.

“‘Christina Agee’ was an option, but that clearly wasn’t going to fly,” she replied, as she “was dead set against the idea and I wanted to represent who I really was.”

“Being Latina, it is a part of my heritage and who I am,” Aguilera added.