DiCaprio has said that not starring in the 1997 classic is his biggest career regret.

Leonardo DiCaprio will ‘never forget’ Paul Thomas Anderson pitching him Boogie Nights in his mom’s living room: ‘Wow’

DiCaprio has said that not starring in the 1997 classic is his biggest career regret.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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December 12, 2025 3:55 p.m. ET

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Leonardo DiCaprio could have played Mark Wahlberg's 'Boogie Nights' role. Credit:

John Nacion/Variety via Getty; G. Lefkowitz/New Line

Leonardo DiCaprio recalls the exact moment when he first heard the idea for writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's *Boogie Nights.*

He recalled "meeting Paul very early on in my career, when I was about to go do *Titanic,* but we were talking about doing *Boogie Nights*," DiCaprio said Wednesday at *Time* magazine's "A Year in Time" event in New York City, per *The Hollywood Reporter*. "I was in my mother's living room, and I'll never forget, I was on the couch and he brought a LaserDisc of *Raging Bull* and a video cassette of pornography. And he said, 'I want to do the *Raging Bull *of pornography.'"

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The Oscar winner was in conversation with his frequent collaborator, Martin Scorsese, who directed *Raging Bull*, the 1980 drama that depicts the life of boxing star Jake LaMotta, played by Robert De Niro in an Oscar-winning performance.

"I thought to myself, 'Wow, that's going to be pretty difficult,'" DiCaprio told Scorsese, with whom he's collaborated on numerous films, including *Killers of the Flower Moon*, *The Departed*, and *The Aviator*. "But you've been close to him over the years, and there’s so much commonality in the way both of you work."****DiCaprio was in his early 20s when he was approached by Anderson, and he had already appeared in movies including *What's Eating Gilbert Grape*, *Marvin's Room*, *This Boy's Life*, and Baz Luhrmann's *Romeo + Juliet*.

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He eventually turned down Anderson, and Mark Wahlberg took the role of the rising porn star known as Dirk Diggler in the well-reviewed 1997 film that has become a classic. (And it even included a tribute to the Scorsese film.)

In August, DiCaprio told Anderson that, looking back on it, he might have given him a different answer.

"My biggest regret is not doing *Boogie Nights*," DiCaprio told the director in a story for *Esquire*. "It was a profound movie of my generation. I can't imagine anyone but Mark in it. When I finally got to see that movie, I just thought it was a masterpiece."

Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson promote 'One Battle After Another' in November.

Antony Jones/Getty

Of course, DiCaprio and Anderson did team up eventually, for this year's action comedy *One Battle After Another*, whose cast also includes Chase Infiniti, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor. The movie earned $48.5 million globally in its opening weekend at the box office, marking a career best for Anderson.

The movie also earned nine nominations for next month's Golden Globes, which is the most of any film, for best musical or comedy, as well as for Anderson's writing and directing and DiCaprio's acting.

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