{"id":2048201,"date":"2025-09-25T04:06:44","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T04:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2048201"},"modified":"2025-09-25T04:06:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T04:06:44","slug":"leonardo-dicaprio-was-pressured-to-change-his-ethnic-name-at-the-start-of-his-career-star-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/leonardo-dicaprio-was-pressured-to-change-his-ethnic-name-at-the-start-of-his-career-star-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"Leonardo DiCaprio Was Pressured to Change His \u2018Ethnic\u2019 Name at the Start of His Career \u2013 Star Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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NDZ\/starmaxinc.com\/Newscom\/The Mega Agency<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Leonardo DiCaprio<\/strong> knew from a young age that he wanted to be an actor and would drag his parents to audition after audition. When he finally got an agent, however, DiCaprio was pressured to change his name.<\/p>\n

\u201cI first got my \u2013 you remember, your first photos that you got,\u201d the Shutter Island<\/em> star, 50, recalled during a Wednesday, September 24, appearance on the New Heights<\/em> podcast<\/a>. \u201cI finally got an agent and they said, \u2018Your name is too ethnic.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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ZUMAPRESS.com \/ MEGA<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He explained that as a 12-year-old kid he questioned the agent, who said, \u201cNo, no. Too ethnic. They\u2019re never going to hire you.\u201d<\/p>\n

DiCaprio\u2019s proposed new name was Lenny Williams.<\/p>\n

As hosts Travis<\/strong> and Jason Kelce<\/strong>, along with DiCaprio\u2019s costar Benicio Del Toro<\/strong>, rolled over laughing, the Academy Award winner revealed how the name came about. The agent took his middle name, Wilhelm, and made it his last name along with a shortened, nickname version of his first name.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad saw this photo, ripped it up and said, \u2018Over my dead body,\u2019\u201d DiCaprio added.<\/p>\n

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ZUMAPRESS.com \/ MEGA<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Del Toro \u2013 who stars alongside DiCaprio in the upcoming film One Battle After Another<\/em> \u2013 was also encouraged to change his name early in his career. The Puerto Rican actor, 58, claimed his proposed moniker was Benny Dell, which he evidently did not agree to either.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source starmagazine.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NDZ\/starmaxinc.com\/Newscom\/The Mega Agency Leonardo DiCaprio knew from a young age that he wanted to be an actor and would drag his parents to audition after audition. When he finally got an agent, however, DiCaprio was pressured to change his name. \u201cI first got my \u2013 you remember, your first photos that you got,\u201d the Shutter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2048202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[24003],"class_list":["post-2048201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-celebrity-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758773203_Leonardo-DiCaprio-Was-Pressured-to-Change-His-\u2018Ethnic-Name-at.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2048201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2048202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2048201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2048201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2048201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}