Leonardo in Catch Me if You Can Credit: Dramworks: 2002

After the fun crime caper film Catch Me If You Can, in which Leo DiCaprio's character posed as a snazzy airline pilot, we might have thought that the hunky star's days in the cockpit were over. In his new film The Aviator, Leo plays the young Howard Hughes, a half-mad billionaire obsessed with flying higher and faster. Hughes was also obsessed with making movies and dating the hottest women in classic Old Hollywood. He was such an obsessive/compulsive perfectionist that he took four years to direct and produce a film, starting all over at one point because movie sound had been invented!

If your only picture of Leo is as Jack, the good-hearted, uncomplicated artist hero of Titanic, then get ready to draw a whole new piece of art! Leo, as tortured soul Howard Hughes delivers what is, perhaps, the performance of a lifetime. He's come of age...bigtime. His director Martin Scorsese, with whom Leo worked on Gangs of New York, says the star was determined to play Hughes and get it right. Scorsese saw a similarity between Leo and the young Hughes, a lankiness that matched well. For one scene, Leo had to undergo seven and a half hours of make-up to convert himself into a Hughes-gone-mad, with long fingernails, ratty hair; an all-around disgusting but very effective look.