Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt notably starred together in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In the movie, they play an aging star and his stunt double, two dudes who are forever tied together in a dynamic duo who lights up the screen in every scene they appear in. In real life, Pitt has publicly nodded at his working friendship with DiCaprio as well, harking back to the Titanic star on more than one occasion at the Oscars.
This year Brad Pitt was back in full force at the 2021 Oscars. Of course, the big story of his to come out the night of had to do with the little man bun Pitt was sporting while he announced the nominees for Best Supporting Actress. The win ultimately went to Minari’s Youn Yuh-jung, but just prior to that, Pitt worked in a nod to his Once Upon A Time In Hollywood co-star. But separately there was another cool moment.
If you were watching the event live, you still may have missed the moment, which came when Brad Pitt was talking about Mank actress Amanda Seyfried’s love for the movies. As the presenter, he was noting what inspired his own as well as the nominees’ love of movies, and for Seyfried that just so happened to be one Leonardo DiCaprio movie:
My love of movies began at the local drive-in, watching the likes of Clint Eastwood and Godzilla. Our nominees for best supporting actress also fell in love with movies at an early age… For Amanda Seyfried, it was the film version of Romeo and Juliet. The Leo version. Amanda, me too.
It was a small comment and did not detract from Youn Yuh-jung’s ultimate win or memorable speech, but this actually was not the first time that Brad Pitt had made a callout to Leonardo DiCaprio while on the Oscars stage. When he won Best Supporting Actor while competing against heavy hitters Tom Hanks, Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins and Joe Pesci, he also took to the stage where he mentioned his Once Upon A Time in Hollywood co-star.
The bulk of his speech that time around was an homage to Quentin Tarantino and his impact on the industry. He also talked about his career over the years, seeing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at the drive-in and his charmed Hollywood story, but gave some credit to Leonardo DiCaprio then as well.
Leo, I’ll ride on your coattails any day man. The view’s fantastic.
For his part, Leonard DiCaprio has spoken warmly about working with Brad Pitt as well, mentioning previously that working together had an "inherent comfort" and "ease" to it. The bromance may largely be found in their working relationship and clear respect for one another, but I'm kind of hoping this back and forth becomes a bit of a yearly thing. I can’t imagine anything more fun than Brad Pitt finding ways to shoehorn Leonardo DiCaprio into the proceedings, even during times he isn’t up for any awards, but we'll have to wait and see.
In fact, movies this year are just really getting rolling and we're a long way off from the Oscars next year. The good news? Leonardo DiCaprio has two notable projects in the weeks, Adam McKay's Don't Look Up and the hotly anticipated Killers of the Flower Moon, though the latter just started production and should not be hitting theaters for a while. Brad Pitt, on the other hand, has David Leitch's assassin movie Bullet Train and a cool cameo in The Lost City of D coming up. For more on potential Oscar hopefuls, take a look at our full upcoming movies schedule.
