Leonardo DiCaprio's turn in Wolf of Wall St cements his place among Hollywood's best Leonardo DiCaprio attends the Weinstein Company's 2014 Golden Globe Awards after party. IT'S a freezing New York winter's day, and Leonardo DiCaprio is moving just a tad gingerly. Thanks to a mishap at his Los Angeles home, his ankle is buggered, and he's using a cane to help navigate around his hotel room. "I sprained it on the floorboards at my house," he shrugs, slowly easing himself on to an uncomfortable looking couch. I'm building a deck and I was showing the architect what I wanted done, so I somehow jumped through a floorboard and popped a couple of ligaments. Of late he reckons he's been injury prone, adding that he also put his back out while filming one of the many drug scenes for his latest film, The Wolf Of Wall Street. I was crawling around like some sort of slug for two days, and ended up at the chiropractor. I think my body forgets I'm not as young as I used to be. It's sort of bizarre (and makes you feel positively ancient) to think that DiCaprio is nearing 40, a milestone he'll hit in November. That this is the baby-faced actor whose striking blue eyes so captivated a generation of hysterical teenage girls in Romeo + Juliet and Titanic. These days, there are a few more lines around those eyes, but it's as if his face has finally caught up with his career (he's a three-time Academy Award nominee). Indeed, there are strong whispers he'll increase that tally, thanks to his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street, based on the memoirs of disgraced stockbroker Jordan Belfort. In a "pump and dump" share scam, Belfort fleeced investors out of some $340 million in the late 1980s and early 1990s to fund a lavish lifestyle of helicopters, yachts, mansions and copious amounts of drugs. Oscar buzzz ... Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. Picture: Mary Cybulski/Paramount Pictures Source: AP DiCaprio, who gives a fearless performance in the film, says he'd been obsessed with the hedonistic nature of Belfort's memoir from the moment the book was published in 2007. The man is portraying the darker nature of himself in his own biography. I became obsessed with playing him because I felt he kind of represented everything that's wrong with America today. DiCaprio, of course, has had his own reputation as a bit of a party boy with, like Belfort, a penchant for models (his latest is 21-year-old German supermodel Toni Garrn). "You can't compare me to him," he snorts. I've got nothing on Jordan Belfort. The actor viewed the book as "this sort of financial underworld story" and wanted five-time collaborator Martin Scorsese to direct the film (indeed the film has elements of Goodfellas about it). Movie master ... Martin Scorsese on the set of Wolf Of Wall Street. For Scorsese, embarking on another project with his protégé was a no-brainer. "Filmmaking can be an arduous business, and there's absolutely nothing worse than working with people who don't want to be there, and Leo is never like that," says Scorsese. Aside from the fact that he's a terrific actor, every time we work together it goes further, and our working relationship gets deeper. We just like to hang out, we like being around each other, we really do. In some ways, DiCaprio and Belfort could be two sides of the same coin. Both accumulated massive wealth at an early age (DiCaprio is said to be worth more than $226 million), but both have handled their money in entirely different ways. DiCaprio, a committed environmentalist and philanthropist, says he can understand where the urge for more stems from. Being a successful person myself, I honestly feel that the attitude is very twisted - the need to accumulate more and more wealth and consume more and more. I've met a lot of people like that in my industry and it almost becomes an obsession with them. Everything relates to more money and once you reach a certain bracket of wealth, that's not enough and you have to get more. And then that's not enough, and you have to get more again. Better with age ... at nearly 40 DiCaprio has established himself as one of Hollywood's best. For Belfort, "more" was never enough. He made $49 million the year he turned 26, but was furious he didn't reach $52 million, "because it was three shy of a million a week." DiCaprio says he liked the fact that Belfort and his cronies "aren't the movers and shakers of Wall Street, these are really street urchins that are trying to emulate Gordon Gekko." The only reservation he had was that the audience would "tune out" because the behaviour of the protagonists is so appalling. Jonah Hill is extraordinary as Belfort's repulsive partner in crime, Donnie, and Aussie Margot Robbie cements her status as a star on the rise as Belfort's wife Naomi. Rising star ... Margot Robbie plays Belfort's wife Naomi in the film. Picture: Roadshow Films Source: Supplied DiCaprio dismisses accusations the film glorifies Belfort's crimes. Belfort ultimately only ended up serving 22 months of his four-year jail sentence, after cooperating with the FBI. "We don't give these people any moral compass whatsoever," he says. We're not apologising for their actions. I think we're portraying them for what they were and what their motivations were, and we're not giving them some false sense of sympathy for an audience. There's also the matter of some of the film's more risque scenes; one which features him snorting cocaine off a woman's breasts, and another has him being whipped by a dominatrix who has an interesting idea for the placement of a burning candle. DiCaprio had no reservations about filming the scenes. "When you do a character like this, you have to go all out," he says. You can't pull any punches. Then there's the fact that we see more of his derrière than he's possibly ever shown on screen. "It was all me," he laughs. All the flabby skin, it was all me. As an aside, The Wolf of Wall Street also now holds the dubious title of the film where the F-word is uttered most frequently, clocking in at a staggering 506 times. Impressive performance ... Jonah Hill stars as Belfort's partner in crime, Donnie. Jonah Hill, who shares some of the film's most debauched scenes with DiCaprio, says of the star, "I learned so much from him and he's so good that it makes you better. To act in a scene with him you have to not be horrible, because he's so good. Since shooting on the film wrapped last January, DiCaprio, aside from various promotional duties for both The Wolf Of Wall Street and The Great Gatsby, has been "taking a break." There's been talk of a future Sinatra biopic with Scorsese, but he says he doesn't know where that's at, and that he's quite happy "not to have any movies lined up at all." He says his past three films - Django Unchained, The Great Gatsby and The Wolf Of Wall Street have "been like a little trilogy for me." "They've all been about the corruption of the American dream, and I didn't really realise that until I did these movies," he explains. I was like, wow, there has been this theme. Now, I need to go away and think about what comes next. When we speak, New Year's Eve is still a couple of weeks away. He says he'll be spending it in Mexico, but that he's been hearing from friends who are throwing Great Gatsby-themed parties to see in the New Year. I just got a text yesterday from a friend who said, 'Hey, I'm throwing a Great Gatsby party, will you do a welcome video?' I'm going to have to tell him no," smiles DiCaprio. I'm probably Gatsby-d out at this point. The Wolf Of Wall Street opens Thursday.