Leonardo DiCaprio says his name is an 'incredible gift'

Los Angeles - Leonardo DiCaprio will only work with directors who are "changing cinema".

The 41-year-old actor is aware that when he lends his name to a movie, it immediately gets financed and wants to use the "incredible gift" to champion "important" films.

He admits: "I get unhappy doing things that I'm not passionate about. Because I feel like I'm squandering this incredible gift I've been given to finance films.

"As soon as my name alone was enough to make this happen, I vowed to myself that I was going to work with directors who were changing cinema, doing something important, you know? This goes back to when I was a teenager, feverishly watching movies like 'Taxi Driver' and 'Apocalypse Now' and saying to myself, someday, I'm going to be a part of films like this."

And Leonardo felt similarly about The Revenant, admitting it was "pretty revolutionary".

He told The Telegraph magazine: "We all knew that we were a part of something pretty revolutionary. From the outset, Alejandro González Iñárritu had an extraordinary vision: to create a film the likes of which audiences had never seen before. You don't get those sort of results without going above and beyond the call of duty ...

"He Alejandro would be like, 'No, no, we're not going to shoot until the raindrops on that section of the bear fur match that section ... No, no, there's a patch of ground there that doesn't look quite right.' That's what it was like. Every day. Like a master painter painting a landscape."