***Did you know:***

*Leo's first date was with a junior-high classmate named Cessi. Leo wore a light blue turtle neck he says he bought at K-Mart and took his date to see "When Harry Met Sally". Cessi thought he was weird and decided not to go out with him again.

*Leo is a vegetarian, and doesn't like the fact that trees are being cut down to make rooms for farms to raise cows and other animals.

*Leo had a near-death experience when he was sky diving in 1995, when his parachute failed to open. Luckily, the instructor opened his emergency back-up parachute, so he was able to land safely.

*When Leo was young, he used to dress in his mother's hand-made clothes. He was often mistaken for a girl because of his clothes and long blong hair.

*Leo was nicknamed Leonardo Retardo when he was in elementary school because he used to copy homework and cheat on tests.

*Leo got his first kiss at 14, and it was awful! The girl poored a mouthful of saliva, and after the kiss, he had to walk away and spit it all out.

*In almost all of Leo's movie's he smokes.

*In the movie's Titanic and This Boys Life, his name is Jack (TBL Jack is his nickname.)

*In both Basketball Diaries and This Boys Life, he plays basketball.

*In Romeo & Juliet and Titanic, Leo's character dies.

*Leo stars with Robert DiNero in This Boys Life and Marvins's Room.

*His first "break" came at age 14 when he appeared in a commercial for Matchbox cars.

*His first feature film was Critters 3--but he doesn't like to talk about it.

*His first $1 million-plus paycheck: Titanic.

*His first car was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which he bought for himself when he turned 18.

*He now drives a black Chevy Tahoe.

*His dates for last year's Cannes Film Festival were his mom and grandma.

*He gets his hair colored at Privé salon in L.A.

*Leo likes to work out on Pilates machines at Gold's Gym in Hollywood, where his pal Mark Wahlberg also likes to pump up.

*He once had a pet Rottweiler named Baby and now has a bearded dragon lizard named Blizz.

*He is a fan of infomercial self-help guru Anthony Robbins.

*Leo speaks fluent German.

*Leo is a huge fan of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. He never misses a game.

*Leo and his friends used to gather crowds at school when they'd put on break-dancing shows for their classmates.

*He was named Leonardo after his pregnant mom paid a visit to an Italian museum. While admiring a da Vinci painting at the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence, she felt a big kick from the baby--and little Leo was thus monikered.

*His parents, George and Irmelin DiCaprio, are '60s hippies who separated before Leo was born.

*As a teenager, he appeared in an educational film titled "How to Deal with a Parent Who Takes Drugs".

*Heidi Fleiss' father, Paul, was Leonardo's pediatrician.

*His first taste of show biz came at age five, when he was asked to leave the set of Romper Room for being too disruptive.

*He credits Growing Pains star Alan Thicke with teaching him "how to put the moves on women."

*In the flick Total Eclipse, Leo appears totally in the buff and gets his first onscreen kiss from a guy--actor David Thewlis.

*Before devoting her time to managing Leonardo's career, his mom was a secretary and his dad was a distributor of underground comic books.

*He shared a house (decorated with leopard-skin prints and black leather) in Los Feliz, California, with his mother until he turned 22, when he moved into a small bungalow bachelor pad in Santa Monica.

*At age 10, he was working with an agent who told him he had the wrong haircut and wanted him to change his name to Lenny Williams.

*When he found out De Niro had chosen him to play Tobias Wolfe in the film version of Wolfe's autobiography, This Boy's Life, DiCaprio became so excited he punched a hole in the ceiling.

*When the Basketball Diaries script called for his character to snort cocaine, he sniffed Ovaltine and would later have to scrape his nose clean with Q-Tips.

*Besides Growing Pains, he has appeared in TV episodes of Parenthood, The Outsiders, Santa Barbara and The New Lassie. He also filmed a bit for Roseanne, but the scene was later cut.

*He has said that when he needs to find the emotion to play a sad scene, he imagines coming home one day to "find his mother horribly charred in a fire."