Leonardo DiCaprio’s Advice on Turning 50: ‘Be More Honest’ and Don’t ‘Waste Time’

At 50, Leonardo DiCaprio has spent more than half his life in the spotlight. Now he’s contemplating his next chapter and what he’s learned from growing older.

“Well, it creates a feeling like you have a desire to just be more honest and not waste your time,” he recently told Esquire.

During the interview, the Titanic star discussed his upcoming black comedy-action film, One Battle After Another. The film’s director, Paul Thomas Anderson, interviewed DiCaprio.

In One Battle After Another, DiCaprio plays a man on a mission to save his daughter from a nationalist group. The movie was inspired by the 1990 political fiction book Vineland.

DiCaprio told Anderson he “can only imagine how the next few decades are going to progress.”

“I look at my mother, for example, and she just says exactly what she thinks and wastes no time. She spends no time trying to fake it,” he said.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars in "One Battle After Another."

Warner Bros.

The star of the 2024 AARP Movies for Grownups best picture winner, Killers of the Flower Moon, who turned 50 on November 11, 2024, discussed the importance of being more straightforward in relationships, accountable for your actions and not taking life for granted.

“Being more upfront and risking having things fall apart or risk the disagreements or risk going your separate ways from any type of relationship in life—the personal, professional—it’s that you just don’t want to waste your time anymore,” DiCaprio said.

 “You have to just be much more upfront. It’s almost a responsibility because much more of your life is behind you than it is ahead of you.

Charlize Theron, who celebrated her 50th birthday on August 7, had previously expressed excitement about reaching this milestone.

“I told my mom that I was looking forward to 50, and she said, ‘Oh, honey, it gets so much better when you hit your 70s,’ ” the actress recently told USA Today. “So, yeah, I feel like I got lucky with good genes. I think life’s going to be OK for me from here on out.”

When Sandra Oh was nearing 50 in 2021, she told AARP that being middle-aged gave her a sense of gratitude.

“I’m extremely grateful to be in the midlife part of my life — being well into our lives and our careers — because you have a certain amount of agency, a certain amount of power and a certain amount of understanding what the deal is,” she said.

“You have an inner resilience. You realize, as we mature, there’s less and less that you can control. The only thing is, ‘Can I freak out differently?’”