Skipping the twilight-zone freak show, and thus avoiding having to show substance abuse that would almost certainly have turned a PG-13 picture into a hard R — a frequent Scorsese rating — The Aviator sets its course instead for Hughes' happier middle age, packed with achievement and celebrities. It breezes through his adventures of the late 1920s through the late 1940s as a free-spending indie director and producer in Hollywood, his battles to turn fledgling airline TWA into a thriving commercial enterprise, and his up-down romance with actress Katharine Hepburn, impersonated boldly by Cate Blanchett right down to the slashing stride and the Bryn Mawr accent. The big concern for DiCaprio was whether audiences would like his interpretation of Hughes enough to ''be connected with the journey, and be behind him.''
Whether or not audiences warm to Leo as Howard, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has taken a shine to Aviator, handing it six Golden Globe nominations, including picture (drama), screenplay, director for Scorsese, supporting actress for Blanchett, and best actor (drama) for DiCaprio. That's a major vindication for him, especially since the limited availability of his costars forced him to shoot his scenes wildly out of order — a big handicap. One day DiCaprio had to put on the mustache and enact the limping gait of Howard at fortysomething, the next he'd have to embody the callow, clean-shaven womanizer, seducing his prey with earnest, irresistible promises of total devotion. Appearing in virtually every scene, the actor was always on call. ''The guy had one day off in 91 [shooting] days,'' says producer Graham King, who also coexec-produced Gangs of New York. ''He went through hell for this movie.''
At Aviator's lavish West Coast premiere on Dec. 1, DiCaprio went through a little more hell, this time at the hands of Access Hollywood cohost Billy Bush (the president's cousin). For a segment titled ''Leo Full Frontal?'' the celeb interviewer queried DiCaprio relentlessly about just one Aviator aspect: the fact that he had to go nude to play an extended scene of Hughes having a mental breakdown in his private screening room. (We get passing intimations of his backside, caught by flashing light from a movie projector.) The actor breaks into a letter-perfect Billy Bush imitation — the breathless delivery, the thrust-in-your-face microphone — as he recalls the indignity of the questions. ''To walk up and have this man ask me, 'So hey, your butt's out there a lot in this movie, huh? Like, you were naked in this movie! How does that make you feel, that your butt was out?!''' DiCaprio does a head-shake double take, like a bobblehead doll. ''I was really taken aback by that one. A movie that was eight years in the making...and that's the sum total. That's all it's come down to. My naked butt.''
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