As Richard, a young American backpacker in Thailand, DiCaprio chases paradise in Danny Boyle’s The Beach (2000), and finds that paradise has a price.
The film follows Richard to a hidden island community that promises escape from the modern world. DiCaprio plays the character’s wonder and then his unraveling with a restless intensity, and the tropical beauty around him only sharpens the story’s darker turn. It was a bold, divisive choice after Titanic, and it showed an actor unwilling to repeat his biggest success.
Image credit: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.