DiCaprio's star status lands him role of his life - climate crisis activist

It is a film industry truism that the movie star is dead, but Leonardo DiCaprio's career may be evidence that there is still life in the concept. Since he became a bona fide lead actor in the late 1990s, DiCaprio's films have earned more than $7bn (£5.7bn), with the actor himself regularly receiving more than $20m a movie; he works with the industry's most heavyweight directors; and he has used his celebrity clout to become a high-profile activist, notably in the fields of the climate crisis and Indigenous rights.

- Andrew Pulver

DiCaprio's new film, Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, appears to be in perfect alignment with all these. DiCaprio, 48, reportedly received $30m to appear, one of the heftiest fees of his career, putting him near the top of the Hollywood fees ladder. Scorsese, of course, is arguably the most high-status film director in the US, with whom DiCaprio has made five previous films. But most pertinently perhaps, Killers of the Flower Moon fully intersects with DiCaprio's campaigning priorities: it is about the real-life murders of scores of Osage tribal members in the 1920s and 30s, part of a brutal land grab over oil rights.