Leonardo DiCaprio has certainly lived the life. He’s been on multimillion dollar yachts with models and partied like it’s going out of style, but now we’re learning that the Academy Award-nominated actor beat death several times.
DiCaprio sat down with Wired to talk about a few of his adventures throughout his life, and that’s when it came out that he escaped death a few times. The 41-year-old actor said he almost got into it with a great white shark while he was diving in South Africa. DiCaprio detailed the potentially terrifying situation.
“If a cat has nine lives, I think I’ve used a few. I mean, there was the shark incident. A great white jumped into my cage when I was diving in South Africa. Half its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me.”
DiCaprio continued to explain how he got himself into that situation in the first place.
“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.”
In @wired ‘s January issue—The nine lives of @LeoDiCaprio : https://t.co/27lMZqKUAI pic.twitter.com/P6X3LbW03w
— Condé Nast (@CondeNast) December 14, 2015
As stated, that’s not all. DiCaprio had another brush with death, and with this one, it’s a surprise that the actor isn’t nervous going on planes. On a Delta flight to Russia, DiCaprio explained that while he was on the plane an engine exploded.
“I was in business class, and an engine blew up in front of my eyes. It was right after ‘Sully’ Sullenberger landed in the Hudson. I was sitting there looking out at the wing, and the entire wing exploded in a fireball.”
As DiCaprio relays this story, it reads like he’s shocked by the whole experience, as opposed to the shark experience, which seems like it holds some sort of excitement.
“I was the only one looking out at the moment this giant turbine exploded like a comet. It was crazy.
“They shut all the engines off for a couple of minutes, so you’re just sitting there gliding with absolutely no sound, and nobody in the plane was saying anything. It was a surreal experience. They started the engines back up, and we did an emergency landing at JFK.”
I interviewed Leonardo DiCaprio for the @WIRED guide to Survival. Check it out: https://t.co/Ajo7EusXe4 pic.twitter.com/7pXmJqcYiV
— robcapps (@robcapps) December 14, 2015
His last story he recounted involved an activity that others do every day for a thrill – skydiving. Leonardo explained he was partaking in a tandem dive when his chute was tangled and wouldn’t open up. The reporter from Wired notes that he laughs while telling some of the story. It’s probably a nice humorous story now that he lived to tell the tale.
He explained that the man he was with cut the chute free after it tangled and opened another chute which wound up tangled as well. As he was plummeting, the second chute finally unraveled midair.
Although it seems like a horrifying story, DiCaprio notes that the “fun part” was the limbs he was anticipating on breaking if he lived through a straight free fall.
“The fun part was when he said, ‘You’re probably going to break your legs on the way down, because we’re going too fast now,’” the Titanic star shared. “So after you see your whole life flash in front of your eyes — twice — he says, ‘Oh, your legs are going to get broken too.’”
Fortunately, DiCaprio lucked out and walked away without sustaining any injuries from his near death experience. Who knew Leonardo DiCaprio was so adventurous?
[Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images]
