'The Revenant' more than a film commitment: DiCaprio

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who finally walked away with the prestigious gold statuette at the 88th Academy Awards here for his role in Alejandro González Iñárritu's directorial "The Revenant", says it is more of a chapter of his life than a film commitment.

In an interview by Robert Capps for the March issue of GQ India, DiCaprio spoke about the film that helped him to bag an Oscar after being in the industry for over two decades.

At the sets of "The Revenant", the toughest thing for the actor was to get in and out of frozen rivers. He would be covered in elk skin and a bear fur which weighed a staggering 100 pounds when it got wet. To combat the bone-chilling cold and to prevent hypothermia, the crew would blast DiCaprio with an Octopus hair dryer after every take for nine months, read a statement.

What drew him to the role of Hugh Glass?

He said: "Glass was a campfire legend - and it's all true. He survived a savage bear attack, was left for dead, then travelled through this uncharted territory of interior America, crawling through hundreds of miles of wilderness on his own.

"So to me the story was a simple linear story, but in Alejandro's hands, of course, it becomes a sort of visual, existential poetry. Not a lot of directors wanted to take this on because of how difficult it would be to shoot.

"The script had been floating around for a couple of years. It wasn't until Alejandro was attached to this man's struggle in nature that it got going. I re-read it and met him again, and I decided to embark on what I would characterize as more of a chapter of my life than a film commitment - because it was epic in every sense of the word."