Why Leonardo DiCaprio says Jennifer Lawrence should get a DVD player before working with Martin Scorsese
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Long-time Martin Scorsese collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio gave Jennifer Lawrence some interesting tips on working with the director, such as buying a DVD player.
The two stars, in a conversation on Variety’s Actors on Actors show, talked about their latest releases, Lawrence’s Die My Love and DiCaprio’s One Battle After Another, and their next project with Scorsese, which is a film adaptation of Peter Cameron’s 2020 novel What Happens at Night.
It’s a story about an American couple who travel to a strange Northern European town to adopt a baby. But upon checking into their hotel, where “nothing is as it seems”, they face increasingly baffling obstacles that prevent them from claiming the baby from the orphanage.
Asked by Lawrence if there was anything she should “absolutely know” about working with The Irishman director before they began filming in January, DiCaprio said: “It’s a great thing, and he’s going to give you a lot of film references”, which he noted usually came in “the form of a DVD”.
“And if you don’t have a DVD player, get one,” he said.
Lawrence joked: “Oh my God. I’m going to kill myself.”
DiCaprio went on to explain the level of detail that Scorsese used in his direction, saying he held screenings “sometimes for just one sequence in a movie”.
“If there’s something that he wants you to capture from an old film or the pacing of something, you might have a screening of a whole film just for a specific scene that he wants to see. We might see some Japanese ghost films for reference, just to get the tone of it. You’re going to have an amazing time.”
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‘What Happens at Night’ will be Leonardo DiCaprio’s seventh feature film with Martin Scorsese (Getty Images for TIME)
This will be DiCaprio’s seventh feature film with Scorsese but Lawrence’s first.
The director was a producer on Die My Love and had sent Cameron’s novel to Lawrence’s production company.
DiCaprio, who was named Time magazine’s 2025 Entertainer of the Year, was 27 when he first worked with Scorsese on The Gangs of New York in 2002. He later starred in The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and, most recently, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).
DiCaprio and Lawrence previously worked together on Adam McKay’s 2021 satirical comedy Don’t Look Up, where they played two astronomers trying their best to warn humanity about an approaching comet that would destroy human civilisation.
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DiCaprio and Lawrence in Adam McKay’s 2021 satirical comedy Don’t Look Up (Netflix Inc)
Earlier this month, Scorsese reunited with DiCaprio and revealed the two traits that defined their successful working relationship.
“We have this ability to collaborate together, and it’s based on trust and love,” the Goodfellas director said at a Time magazine event, according to People. “We go to places sometimes that at times feel almost impossible.”
DiCaprio said an important aspect of their working relationship was to “debate for months” about films and screenplays as part of a playful “cinema education”.
“It’s lots of questions and lots of playing devil’s advocate about a way to approach things that may not be the most obvious direction,” he explained. “We’re doing that on the new film that we’re doing now, but it’s been absolutely one of the most profound learning experiences.”
