Any actor who plays a real-life figure tends to jump at the opportunity to pick their brains, but that was only a small part of how Leonardo DiCaprio prepared to embody Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Not only was the story lifted from genuine events, but it had been detailed in the book of the same name penned by Belfort. While the disgraced stockbroker is only 12 years older than the person who played him on-screen, the lack of a massive generational gap between them makes it easier for DiCaprio to relate to the rise and fall of his opposite number on a performative level.

The star spent months interacting with Belfort in order to gain a better understanding of how to play him on-screen, seeking to emulate his personality, mannerisms, and distinct brand of charisma that was confident enough to convincingly sell anybody anything while teetering on the brink of being domineering.

One thing DiCaprio didn’t have a solid grasp on, however, was how to behave when he was out of his mind on quaaludes. Fortunately, that was an arena where Belfort had previously excelled, and he took it upon himself to teach the Hollywood A-lister to recreate the total loss of control that comes with it.

“I showed him what it looks and feels like when you are high on quaaludes,” Belfort said to 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 fuck we were doing”. His talents as a thespian were lacking, but at least the dedication was there.

“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,” DiCaprio admitted, with the scenes of his Belfort flailing around in a state of uninhibited drug-induced inebriation comfortably among the most memorable moments from The Wolf of Wall Street.

And yet, that still wasn’t enough. He’d been shown the ropes directly from the source on how to pretend as if he was so riddled with quaaludes he could barely function, but DiCaprio also drew inspiration from a viral YouTube clip where alcohol was the main culprit.

“A lot of the research that I did really came from watching this one video on loop,” he clarified. “It’s called ‘The Drunkest Guy in the World’. It’s a man trying to get a beer, but his body doesn’t quite work. That was a huge inspiration to me”. Challenge accepted, he tried to combine the best of both worlds.

Part Belfort and part ‘Drunkest Guy in the World’, it can’t be argued that DiCaprio knocked it out of the park when it came to portraying somebody so wasted they couldn’t convince their body to do anything.