Leonardo DiCaprio’s prolific career has secured him a spot in Hollywood’s pantheon of greatest actors. Now, he’s rising as a drink-holding meme star.
There’s a staggering amount of scenes in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters are holding alcoholic beverages and toasting, but why do they also make for so many incredibly popular memes? DiCaprio is famously known for his long list of critically-acclaimed roles, such as Romeo Montague in Romeo + Juliet and Dom Cobb in Inception. However, he has recently been gaining some extra popularity on the internet due to his habit of starring in extremely versatile drinking-centered memes.

The first “Drinking DiCaprio” meme to become popular came from Jay Gatsby’s big introduction in The Great Gatsby, where he toasts while looking triumphantly at Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) during his legendary party. Then came Django Unchained with the first encounter between Calvin Candie (DiCaprio) and Django (Jamie Foxx), where Candie utters his famous quote “you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention” while holding a coconut drink, which spawned its corresponding meme. It would later be surpassed in popularity by the moment in the same movie when he laughs snarkily at his own joke during his dinner with Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and Leonide Moguy (Dennis Christopher). The most recent DiCaprio meme has Rick Dalton from Once Upon A Time In Hollywood pointing at his TV while holding a beer and a cigarette. Other instances also include Titanic’s Jack Dawson and The Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort casually toasting.
Even without any hint of context, each of these moments manages to encapsulate a very specific reaction that can be applied to plenty of situations in everyday life. This is due to the actor’s masterful ability to express lots of emotions with a single facial expression and the unique way in which he holds each drink. For instance, DiCaprio’s smug expression and hand gesture in the Great Gatsby meme denotes both pride and cordiality, while his cynical laugh and his pompous grasp on his drink in Django Unchained denotes an immediately recognizable sense of playful malice, all in a single frame. Just the way Django’s Calvin Candie uses his coconut drink as an extension of his body and the way Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’s Rick Dalton casually points at the TV perfectly summarize all of the characters’ relatable reactions.
Some actors accomplish this degree of nuance with their body movements, the delivery of their lines, or the timing of their interactions with the rest of the cast, but DiCaprio nails it with precise gestures that allow the audience to understand his state of mind in every frame of every movie. Similarly, there are other actors who seem to fixate on other extremely specific actions. For example, there isn’t any other actor who rivals Tom Cruise’s obsession with running scenes. Harrison Ford, on the other hand, can’t stop pointing angrily at people in all his movies. And for all the different tough guys that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson portrays in Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, he can’t seem to let go of his grey and beige jungle-friendly attire. Leonardo DiCaprio’s expressiveness just happens to work as perfectly for movies as it does for memes.
Why are Leonardo DiCaprio’s memes so popular? Because he’s uncommonly expressive. Why is he almost always holding a drink in them? In part, because some of his most memorable scenes have unintentionally coincided with moments where he’s holding a beverage. But most importantly, because he’s just simply one of cinema’s greatest on-screen drink holders.
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