Leonardo DiCaprio Almost Died Shooting New Documentary, Was Saved By Marvel Superhero


As Leonardo DiCaprio made it perfectly clear in his speech when he collected the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in The Revenant, he’s rather passionate about climate change.

So much so that DiCaprio has just helped to produce and star in a documentary entitled Before The Flood, which was directed by Fisher Stevens and will premiere on the National Geographic Channel at the end of the month. The doc revolves around climate change.

It has now been revealed that DiCaprio’s efforts to highlight climate change with Before The Flood almost resulted in his own death during the development and evolution of the documentary. Fisher Stevens made this admission to GQ, revealing that while doing some underwater shooting for the film, DiCaprio’s oxygen tank was leaking. DiCaprio was in drastic need of assistance, and luckily he found it in the shape of Marvel superhero Ed Norton, who previously portrayed the Hulk in The Incredible Hulk.

Stevens revealed that this incident, which occurred around six years ago, took place out near the Galapagos island, and actually happened before work on the film had even begun.

“The second time we properly hung out together was in 2010 when I was invited to film Sylvia Earle for a TED conference expedition to the Galapagos. I was filming Sylvia and I had this little easy camera to shoot underwater, and he was Sylvia’s diving buddy, so I said, ‘Would you film Sylvia?’ And he said, ‘Yeah I love it, man. I love it,'” Stevens recalled of Leo.

It was a rather star-studded expedition underwater, as Fisher Stevens revealed.

“I was diving buddies with Edward Norton. So we go down and we see 300 Eagle Rays and Spotted Rays and it was an amazing dive. Leo bolts away with Sylvia, and Edward goes in front of me and the next thing I know after twenty minutes I’d lost them all.”

Stevens got a rather huge shock when he finally caught up and came across the hugely successful actors again, though, as he was shocked to see Leonardo DiCaprio piggy-backing on Edward Norton’s oxygen tank as his had sprung a leak.

“Then, I see Leo buddy breathing, because Leo’s tank was leaking oxygen, and Edward had to save him! It was pretty crazy,” Stevens remarked. However, despite his brush with death, Leonardo DiCaprio was ever professional and actually managed to get some footage for the documentary that Stevens admitted he came close to using. The only problem was that once Leonardo DiCaprio stopped breathing his camerawork became a little suspect. Which was understandable.

“But he actually did get some film for me and it was good for a second and then it got pretty shaky when he couldn’t breathe. But we really bonded on that trip.”

This isn’t the first time in recent years that Leonardo DiCaprio has had to go up against it while filming, which included almost getting hypothermia when shooting The Revenant. Meanwhile, DiCaprio also told Wired, via Vulture, about the time that he almost died when “a great white [shark] jumped into [his] cage when [he] was diving in South Africa. Half its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me.”

“They leave the tops open and you have a regulator line running to the surface. Then they chum the water with tuna. A wave came and the tuna sort of flipped up into the air. A shark jumped up and grabbed the tuna, and half its body landed inside the cage with me. I sort of fell down to the bottom and tried to lie flat. The great white took about five or six snaps an arm’s length away from my head. The guys there said that has never happened in the 30 years they’d been doing it.”

Before The Flood doesn’t just feature Leonardo DiCaprio discussing the devastating effects that global warming is having on the planet, but it also includes interviews with the likes of Barack Obama, Pope Francis, and John Kerry, as well as numerous other individuals, too. It will debut on the National Geographic Channel on October 30.

[Featured Image by 20th Century Fox]

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