Dicaprio first got the itch to play Howard Hughes circa 1995, around the time he started Titanic, after reading an arresting biography of the man titled Howard Hughes: The Untold Story. It was an idea that wouldn't quit, though DiCaprio wasn't the first in Hollywood to be intrigued and also flummoxed by the scale of the endeavor.
So what made Leo so anxious to walk in this guy's canvas shoes? ''It had all the elements that were like a Greek tragedy,'' he says. ''Here is [one of] America's first legitimate billionaires. This man who was his own boss, who had all the money in the world. And he's risking his life test-flying these planes and crashing. And he really did it. This wasn't some publicity stunt.'' It makes emotional sense that DiCaprio would fixate on playing such an intensely private, withdrawn man just as Titanic's mind-boggling success was making him the world's biggest tabloid magnet. ''He is still shrouded in so much mystery to this day. They weren't able to get a picture of him [in later years].'' DiCaprio also just happens to like one-man shows. ''I always loved to watch a character alone with his elements, you know? I love being alone with a character, like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. I like simple kinds of character studies where you...don't have too many distractions. You get to transport yourself into somebody else's mind.''
After Michael Mann passed on the script (by Gladiator scribe John Logan) in early 2002, DiCaprio needed a new director for his pet project. As DiCaprio tells it, he removed the script's title page when he sent it to Scorsese because he knows the director despises air travel. That's not exactly how Scorsese remembers it. ''I turned the page and saw the words The Aviator,'' he says in his trademark rapid-fire, nervous-narrator patter. ''My heart dropped a bit. I said, Oh, I guess I won't be doing this.... I have a terrible phobia about flying. But I am fascinated by that period of aviation and the art deco look. When a plane flies on screen, it looks great. I just don't like to be bounced around in the damn things, hahaha! The dips, the falling...everything goes black. I get so depressed about it.''
Discovering only as he turned more pages that Aviator was about Howard Hughes, Scorsese kept reading. ''I loved the sense of fighting and combat in big business.'' He also admired what John Logan had done to streamline Hughes' tumultuous life. By mid-2002, Scorsese had pretty much committed.
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