Australian director Baz Luhrmann knew who’d make the perfect Romeo and didn’t even audition any actors for the role.
Baz adapted William Shakespeare’s beloved play into his 1996's Romeo + Juliet movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the titular lovers.
While at the Canadian film festival TIFF to present his new documentary about American royalty, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, the director told Entertainment Weekly how he found the perfect hero for the film.
He recalled the pre casting time, saying, "Oh, how am I going to make this? And then I saw a picture of what I thought was a model or something. It might have been in PEOPLE magazine or something."
He continued: "That's how Romeo should look. And someone said to me, 'Oh, he's actually an actor,'" and the director thought, "Well..."
He recalled that when he first met the Titanic star to "workshop the idea, because [DiCaprio] wasn't really sure," the Oscar winner "cashed in his business class tickets, brought all his friends, and we have, today, still the videos of him and his friends doing the scenes. The rest is history really."
Baz declared, "I mean, there was only Leonardo. I never actually auditioned any other person."
Continuing to highlight what made the heartthrob the perfect fit for the role, Luhrmann said, "Leo has a wonderful, quite unique quality of being both a tremendous actor and a star. Some people are stars and some people are great character actors, but he's both. He's a character actor who has star quality. He illuminates the screen."