Leonardo DiCaprio Got A Shocking Look At Lassie | Letterman

I'm alright. How are you? Have you filed your income tax returns yet? No, I don't do my taxes. My mom does them for me. Is mom reliable? My mom is very reliable. Would you like a steak dinner? Can we get you a nice big thick steak? No thanks, Dave. Tell me a little bit about your name if you don't mind. Leonardo DiCaprio. It is a very rhythmic, very poetic sort of sounding name. Thank you. Is there a story about that? Actually, I do have a story about my name. Let me hear it. Well, the first time I got an agent, they thought my name... How old were you? I was about six years old, seven years old. You got an agent at six years old? Well, I tried to get an agent, but I didn't succeed because they wanted to change my name to Lenny Williams. They thought my name was a little too ethnic, so they sort of dissected it and said, Hey, Leonardo Lenny. My middle name is Wilhelm, so they changed that to Williams. Let's get back to your given name again. Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio? Yeah, that's my name. Wow, that's a good one. That's great. Thanks. And why is it that your folks selected an Italian-sounding name and then a German-sounding name? Well, my mother's German and my dad's Italian. There you go. There's an answer for every story in this life. All part of God's great plan, isn't it? So, when you were six years old, how did you get into show business? What were you... You were just, like, going to school, and then one day you said, I want to be in show business. Well, the first time was actually on TV. I was on TV at about three years old. Have you ever seen Romper Room? Are you kidding? Try and keep me away from Romper Room. Well, it was my favorite show at the time, and I just absolutely loved the show, and I used to sing the songs at home and everything. Let's hear one. Oh, God. Come on. It's too far away. I can't remember. Come on, Wilhelm. Let's go, buddy. So, I went on Romper Room, right, and I was completely excited. They had a little circle, and they were all singing and dancing and stuff like that, but I was too excited to be on camera, so I was running up and slapping the cameras and stuff like that and screaming and looking inside the camera. I tried to pull my mom on stage, and finally I was too much to handle, so they completely kicked me off the show. You were 86. You were tossed. You were adiosed. I was adiosed. And were you crestfallen? You must have been crushed when you got bounced off Romper Room. No, no, no. Really? I saw myself on television. I was just, like, completely neurotic. It was beautiful. That happens to me almost every night right here. Are you really that excited? Yeah, I see you. Oh, my God! I saw the film you did with Robert De Niro and Ellen Bark in This Boy's Life. Mm-hmm. You know, that was a great, and forgive me if this is the wrong term, but it was a small sort of film. It wasn't a huge budget with chase scenes and space. Well, no. It made about $8 million, I think. But it was a very nice piece of work, is what I was trying to say, based on a book. And I thought that the interaction between you and De Niro was especially entertaining. Thank you. I mean, that was very interesting to watch. Did you have a good relationship with him with the film? I did. Bobby De Niro was great. Oh, you called him Bobby. There you go. Yeah, Bobby and I, you know. You're in show business now, pal. Robert De Niro was great. I remember a scene we were doing, actually, where he had his... Did you see the Zippo scene where he's trying to, like, impress my mom, played by Ellen Barkin? And Ellen found this so hilarious every time. He's got something he does with the lighter. Yeah, he pops it open and, you know, does his whole, you know, thing. And Ellen, as soon as she saw Robert De Niro do this, she started cracking up immediately. And the whole set was in hysterics. And towards, like, the 25th take, I got a little agitated, because I was usually one that was, like, getting the laughs around set. So I stand up and I go, you know, guys, can we be a little more professional here? You know, you're laughing all the time. You know, I got things to do. I was a bit of a smartass. I was 16 years old. I learned my lesson. And Bob takes me aside and he goes, you know, there's a certain line, you know, with jokes. He goes, you know, you shouldn't cross that line, because sometimes you can't get back. That's right. So I sit there and I come back to my chair and my heart is, like, down to my butt and I'm just sitting there. Did I mess up? That's the reason you'll never be back on Romper Room. It goes on your permanent record. So two takes later, they nailed the scene and I never actually figured out if he was really angry with me or if he wanted to just change the tempo. I have a feeling it was a little of both. But he forgave me for it, actually, at the end. Good. He took me out and we had a bunch of pies and stuff. You talked about Romper Room and how you were tossed off and nearly arrested. And then what was, like, your first legitimate acting role as a kid? Did you want to be an actor or did you just say, here? I knew I wanted to be an actor for a long time, definitely. My first dramatic, real drama was on The New Lassie. And I think we have a clip of that. But I remember that... I'm supposed to be the one that tells the people that we have the clips. How would you know anything about our clip inventory? That's my responsibility. When we have a clip, I turn to the camera and I say, we got a clip, don't we? Well, anyway, the funny thing about Lassie was... We have a clip! Lassie was actually a female dog. Lassie is supposed to be a female dog. Supposed to be a female, yeah. Lassie, Lattie. Lattie would be the male, Lassie is the female. Right. So they had five different dogs that were all guys to do the tricks. We have five different polls. Male dogs are smarter or something like that, right? What did you say? I don't know. I don't know what they're doing. What are you doing? The male dogs are smarter? Is that what you said? I don't know. One was for the tricks, one was for the expressions and this and that, right? So they had a big pregnancy scene where Lassie was giving puppies. And I first realized how fake the business... That's hard for the guys. We first realized how fake... I first realized how fake the whole business was when they had to do the pregnancy scene because they had to tape over Lassie's... I know you're just a kid, but you possess a wisdom and a maturity indescribable here. They had to tape over Lassie's special fur. And I was sitting there... Hey, hey, hey! This ain't romper room, okay? I was a little shocked. I was a little disappointed. Disappointed, were you? Yeah. Gosh, what aspect of that did you find disappointing?