At the 2014 Golden Globes, Leonardo DiCaprio was voted Best Actor for his role in The Wolf of Wall Street. Here’s our interview prior to the film’s release.

Three- time Academy Award nominee Leonardo DiCaprio returns to the screen as Jordan Belfort, a New York stockbroker caught up in a web of lies and financial corruption in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”  We spoke with the elusive star about his latest role, and on becoming the tragic hero in the magnificent epic from Baz Luhrmann, “The Great Gatsby,” earlier this year.

At only 36 DiCaprio has already garnered numerous awards and possesses an enviable body of work that includes “Django Unchained,” “J. Edgar,” “Inception,” and Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island,” “The Departed,” “The Aviator” and “Gangs of New York.”

After a successful career that began as a child television actor, and an Academy Award nomination in his second starring role in 1993’s “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape;” it was 1997’s blockbuster “Titanic” that transformed DiCaprio into a megastar and one of the biggest movie stars of our day. Now, in addition to his acting work, he also oversees his own production company, Appian Way.  Under this banner he wrote, produced and narrated the acclaimed environmentally themed documentary “The 11th Hour.” Other Appian Way productions are the aforementioned “Shutter Island” and “The Aviator,” as well as “The Ides of March,” “Red Riding Hood,” “Orphan,” “Public Enemies” and the soon to be released “Out of the Furnace,” starring Christian Bale and Woody Harrelson, and “Runner, Runner,” starring Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck.

DiCaprio is well known for his dedication to the environment on a global scale, producing creative projects, spearheading numerous public awareness campaigns, and launching The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

H: What are your expectations for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’?
LDC: I really work my ass off when I am doing these movies, that’s all I know. You never can really control the outcome of any of those films. And when you make a movie it’s really like giving a baby off to the world and people will either tear this film apart or embrace it. And the only thing you can really do is commit to doing the best job you possibly can. And if it does look effortless at times, it’s because there is a tremendous amount of work put into making these movies.

H: You do such different and superior projects and manage to work with extraordinary directors, in “The Wolf of Wall Street” you work with a director with whom you’ve done five films; Tell us about working with Martin Scorsese again.
LDC: It’s been a situation where I’ve been lucky to be able to work with him and by chance we gravitate towards the same material. I suppose we have the same taste and the types of movies that we want to do but for me he has been an incredible mentor and somebody that taught me more about respecting the art of cinema than anyone else in my life. The man lives and breathes movie and movie making. He is a great historian of film and every time I step on set with him I learn something new and it brings me closer to becoming an actor that I want to become.  He is one of the greatest Americans, truly.  He is a national treasure in a lot of ways and I am simply honored to be able to work alongside of him.

HOMBRE: Earlier this year you starred in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” what were your thoughts on the project?
Leonardo DiCaprio: You know, this was one of the most celebrated novels in the entire world. This was a great American novel of the last century. And it’s intrinsically woven into the fabric of what America is. All the ideals and dreams of becoming a great American and here is this central figure, this mysterious man Jay Gatsby that came from nothing but created his own destiny according to his own dreams and imagination. Fitzgerald wrote in a very pivotal time in our country when we were becoming a great superpower and he predicted in a lot of ways the stock market crash in early 30s. That’s why it’s incredibly written and it’s one of the most interesting complex novels I have ever read. It was very timely and it’s timeless. And it’s a cycle that keeps repeating itself in our country and around the world. We keep growing and growing with great excess, with complete disregard for the rest of the world around us.

H: How was it working with Baz Luhrmann and transforming the novel into a feature screen?
LDC: Baz is a bit of Gatsby himself in a lot of ways. I keep saying that, but as a very young man he envisioned his life in a certain way and he wanted to create great art and his unique style and he has done that. I remember him bringing this novel to me and he had such a great enthusiasm and passion for putting it up on screen. It’s infectious – you sit in a room with the man and it’s almost impossible to say no. But the mere fact that I’ve known him for almost 20 years and I thought it would be a great partnership to take on this challenge and it was a really rewarding one. I think not only we had a terrific time making a movie, but it also was a detective work for all of us to really try to get it as close to what Fitzgerald intended as we possibly could.

H: How was it to relive The Great Gatsby era?
LDC: It was amazing. The decadence and wealth that existed during that time period was just enormous and to see Baz recreate this world in the only way he could was just completely immersive. It’s one of those situations in which you wish you could get back in that time period but of course you can’t and those parties don’t exist. And so therefore making a movie about it and being immersed in this world is a pretty terrific experience.

H: Did you relate to Jay Gatsby?
LDC: I think we all have a little bit of Gatsby in us. We all get nostalgic for a certain time period of our life. I can connect to Gatsby in a way that I feel he is this eternal hopeful dreamer but he is also delusional in a lot of ways. Daisy represents this time period in his life. She is this great light, she is this mirage that doesn’t really exist in reality and Nick (Tobey Maguire) is the only one in this movie that really sees Gatsby in reality for what he is, but Gatsby is completely out of touch. He is a shell of a human being. My job as an individual is to try to get as close to reality as I possibly can and not be a Gatsby. He is very tragic figure, a very sad one.  It’s exciting picking up this novel as an adult and see all those different layers, looking at Gatsby in a completely different context as I did as a youth.