Early Life and Family
DiCaprio, an only child, was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Irmelin (née Indenbirken), is a former legal secretary; born in Germany, she moved from Oer-Erkenschwick in the Ruhr, to the U.S. during the 1950s, with her parents. His father, George DiCaprio, is an underground comic artist and producer/distributor of comic books. A fourth-generation American, DiCaprio's father is of half Italian (from the Naples area) and half German descent (from Bavaria). DiCaprio's maternal grandmother, Helene Indenbirken (1915–2008), was born Yelena Smirnova in Russia. In a 2010 conversation with the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, DiCaprio said that two of his grandparents were Russian.
DiCaprio's parents met while attending college and subsequently moved to Los Angeles. He was named Leonardo because his pregnant mother was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in a museum in Italy when DiCaprio first kicked. DiCaprio was raised Catholic.
His parents divorced when he was a year old and he lived mostly with his mother. The two lived in several Los Angeles neighborhoods, such as Echo Park, and at 1874 Hillhurst Avenue, Los Feliz district (which was later converted into a local public library), while his mother worked several jobs to support them. She remarried. He attended Seeds Elementary School and graduated from John Marshall High School a few blocks away, after attending the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies for four years.
Read more about this topic: Leonardo DiCaprio
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or family:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Very early in our children’s lives we will be forced to realize that the “perfect” untroubled life we’d like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don’t want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent,
So those who enter death must go as little children sent.
Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead;
And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead.”
—Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905)
“A real hangover is nothing to try out family remedies on. The only cure for a real hangover is death.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)