DiCaprio recalls crying as a child while watching 1933's King Kong

Movieweb reports that Leonardo DiCaprio told the National Board of Review Awards crowd yesterday (January 13) that 1933's original King Kong, which he saw when he was four, left him "crying hysterically" as the ape was transported from Skull Island to New York City. He had just picked up the Best Actor prize for 2025.

DiCaprio recalled the image of Kong at the tip of the Empire State Building in black and white and described how the film changed his relationship with cinema. He said, "As I kept on watching, something shifted in me. It was a place to escape my neighborhood. A place where something larger than my own life seemed possible.

At some point, each of us sat in a movie theater, the lights went down, something on that screen rearranged how we saw the world and ourselves. As I became an adult, I began to understand that cinema is our most definitive art form. It expresses what it means to be human." His most recent role was revolutionary Bob Ferguson in Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another.

Key Topics

Culture, Leonardo Dicaprio, King Kong, Empire State Building, Paul Thomas Anderson, Monsterverse