Annette Sharp, The Daily Telegraph, reports
IN the flesh, Leonardo DiCaprio hardly fits the Hollywood playboy profile.
Standing next to Richard Wilkins on stage at The Star last Tuesday, it was Wilkins who epitomised the LA style - tall, blond, tanned, slightly grizzled and expensively dressed, a cinephile might have mistaken him for the Hollywood star on the dais.
Wearing a crumpled cotton navy jacket, a plain open-neck cotton shirt, casual shoes and no make-up, the shorter man to whom Wilkins handed the microphone didn't radiate star power at all. Until he opened his mouth.
Then in a practised, quiet cadence that sounded like the audio track to countless American civil war documentaries, DiCaprio took ownership of a vast and noisy hotel lobby with a minimum of fuss thanks to 800 revellers being suddenly awestruck.
It quickly became clear how this slightly geeky boy-man commands the attention of a seemingly endless trail of supermodels and Hollywood "it girls".
He is matinee cool and his appeal has not been lost on a cheer squad of Aussie models including 2008 Australia's Next Top Model contestant Alyce Crawford, 21, and 20-year-old Kendal Schuler, who has been described as a lookalike for his ex, supermodel Bar Refaeli.
As millions of film-lovers know, DiCaprio is the highest-paid actor in the world and can command $40 million a movie. He topped Forbes magazine's highest-paid actors list with estimated earnings of $77 million between May 2010 and May 2011, eclipsing second place-getter Johnny Depp on $50 million.
The Hollywood heavyweight has been in Sydney since the end of August after reuniting with the director credited with launching his star into the stratosphere with 1996's Romeo + Juliet, Australian Baz Luhrmann.
Luhrmann has cast DiCaprio in the title role of his $120 million The Great Gatsby, currently shooting at Fox Studios and on location in Rozelle, and the actor has made Sydney home until Christmas.
At 36, DiCaprio is only two years younger than Robert Redford was when he played Gatsby in the 1974 version of the classic novel.
Yet the former child actor with the open face and youthful disposition is still largely regarded as a boy and not a man staring down the barrel of 40.
An only child, DiCaprio, whose parents split when he was one, was groomed for stardom but resents the fame that has made him a prized paparazzi catch.
Intensely private, he has played cat and mouse with Sydney media since arriving and has taken to hiding under a large baseball cap and being driven about in a convoy of vehicles, with body doubles employed as decoys.
Home has been a five-bedroom, five-bathroom harbourfront mansion in Vaucluse with its own pool, private jetty and luxury cruiser. But after being discovered at the $10,000-a-week rental in his first weeks here, DiCaprio has also taken a complimentary suite at The Star, where he has his own butler, driver, limo and access to the casino's luxury jet.
For company DiCaprio has been enjoying time with his Gatsby co-star Tobey Maguire, a close friend for 20 years after the pair met at auditions for a failed spin-off TV series of Ron Howard's film Parenthood in 1990.
Director Luhrmann and his wife Catherine Martin look to have recommended some of their favourite haunts for dinner - the French bistro Felix and Woolloomooloo Wharf's Otto Ristorante early favourites of DiCaprio and his castmates, who also include Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton and Isla Fisher.
A week after settling into Sydney, DiCaprio's 24-year-old actress girlfriend Blake Lively, with whom he has now split, flew into town for a quick three-day rendezvous. During her stay, the pair visited Aria Restaurant at Circular Quay and Featherdale Wildlife Park at Doonside before she packed her bags for home with a gift from The Family Jewels in Paddington.
Other establishments to enjoy his patronage have included the nightclub Beach Haus, a popular hangout, where DiCaprio is rumoured to have twice picked up beautiful young companions.
He last month accompanied Mulligan and Maguire to a Sydney Swans game and has been spotted at Bondi - but not on the beach, rather tucked up at Icebergs.
Some have claimed that he has been miserable here - he abandoned a Harbour cruise with Maguire's family after spotting paparazzi nearby - yet Edgerton says he has been in excellent form.
"I think he is fantastic ... Not that I expected anything otherwise but he is an incredibly level-headed, down-to-earth regular guy who happens to be a great actor and one of the biggest movie stars on Earth," Edgerton said.
"There are obviously the trappings that go with that but there's never ever any real indication that he buys into that legend - he's just really cool and chilled out."
With all that fine dining under his belt, DiCaprio has kept himself in shape with workouts at the Hyde Park Club gymnasium and bike rides in Centennial Park.
Having last week taken up with underwear model Madalina Ghenea, life is looking very sweet.
