Leonardo DiCaprio can give a great impromptu reaction, as witnessed live during the 2016 Golden Globes. But DiCaprio has also become a reaction meme himself.
Unlike Ben Affleck, who’s become a meme for his off-screen moments, DiCaprio’s movie roles (and the age-gap discourse around his dating life) are largely the source of his memes.
Here’s a breakdown of some of Leonardo DiCaprio’s best-known memes.
The Great Gatsby
This one, also known as the Leonardo DiCaprio toast, feels ancient by internet standards. The 2013 Baz Luhrmann movie, in which DiCaprio plays Jay Gatsby, is probably best known for a meme of DiCaprio smiling and raising a champagne glass.
It first circulated in 2013 as an image and GIF on Tumblr, where it was often used to idealize the approaching 2020s. But over the next few years in evolved into a text meme. It was also digitally altered to make it look like he’s holding up different things, such as his Academy Award statuette.
Django Unchained
Another DiCaprio movie, another meme where he’s holding a glass.
In Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 film Django Unchained, DiCaprio plays brutal slaveowner Calvin Candie, and in this tense scene Jamie Foxx’s Django is at his plantation trying to buy back his wife, played by Kerry Washington.
The meme is of Candie laughing at his own joke while holding a drink. Know Your Meme claims the image became a meme around 2017, first on Tumblr. The Django DiCaprio meme then spread to Reddit and Twitter, where it was largely used to laugh at bad jokes. It got more popular around 2020.
Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood
Well, DiCaprio is also holding a drink in this meme. So that makes it a trend.
This meme, also known as the Leo pointing meme, is from another Tarantino movie: 2019’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood.
In the scene, DiCaprio’s character Rick Dalton is watching one of his old films with pal and stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). When he sees that he’s about to be on-screen, he snaps, whistles, and points to the TV. In the summer of 2020, it was quite popular on Twitter.
“when someone says the title of the movie in the movie,” says one tweet from April 2020.
Know Your Meme points to February 2020 as one of the earliest uses of the meme, and it was quickly used to point out hypocrisy and recognition. It also become a helpful meme for that actor whose face you know, but not their name.
