At 15, Leonardo Dicaprio sat down with a pile of rented VHS tapes and gave himself a crash course in movie history. Heād recently, and miraculously, landed his first major movie role, playing opposite Robert De Niro, and figured heād better brush up on the classics, fast. He watched film after film, but no performance awed him more than the one James Dean gave in Elia Kazanās 1955 East of Eden, as Cal Trask, the rebellious son of a disapproving, rigidly principled, Bible-thumping father. Craving attention, heās a cutup, a jittery postadolescent clown, a kid perpetually showing off on the monkey bars; if only his yearning could be seared right out of him, the way a teenager burns off calories. Deanās Cal is simultaneously self-protective and exposedāthe tenderness he needsā¦
