Early Life and Family
DiCaprio, an only child, was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Irmelin (née Indenbirken), is a former legal secretary; born in Germany, she moved from Oer-Erkenschwick in the Ruhr, to the U.S. during the 1950s, with her parents. His father, George DiCaprio, is an underground comic artist and producer/distributor of comic books. A fourth-generation American, DiCaprio's father is of half Italian (from the Naples area) and half German descent (from Bavaria). DiCaprio's maternal grandmother, Helene Indenbirken (1915–2008), was born Yelena Smirnova in Russia. In a 2010 conversation with the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, DiCaprio said that two of his grandparents were Russian.
DiCaprio's parents met while attending college and subsequently moved to Los Angeles. He was named Leonardo because his pregnant mother was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in a museum in Italy when DiCaprio first kicked. DiCaprio was raised Catholic.
His parents divorced when he was a year old and he lived mostly with his mother. The two lived in several Los Angeles neighborhoods, such as Echo Park, and at 1874 Hillhurst Avenue, Los Feliz district (which was later converted into a local public library), while his mother worked several jobs to support them. She remarried. He attended Seeds Elementary School and graduated from John Marshall High School a few blocks away, after attending the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies for four years.
Read more about this topic: Leonardo DiCaprio
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or family:
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To divide one’s life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.”
—Clifton Fadiman (b. 1904)
“Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described—and will be, after our deaths—by each of the family members who believe they know us.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)