Ed Norton is an esteemed and acclaimed actor in his own right, but he’s also close friends with someone who is considered one of the best actors of all time – Leonardo DiCaprio. They have never worked together on a movie, but are friends because they’re both involved in environmental causes. In 2016, Norton took the opportunity to absolutely roast his buddy to Jimmy Fallon when he recalled a diving trip the two took in the Galapagos.
“Leo is a very, very old friend of mine and our friendship is totally based on our mutual passion for environmental advocacy and climate change awareness. He’s a great actor, but we’ve never worked together. We’ve taken a lot of trips together to amazing places, we’ve gone diving together and gone to see a lot of incredible natural wonders together.”
“In this case we were on a diving trip in the Galapagos Islands. Leo – I love him – but he’s very addicted to his devices. If you’re talking to him, his checking his phone because he’s trying to figure out which club is blowing up and which Israeli supermodel turned 18 four hours ago.” Go off, Norton.
Norton continues; “Leo has a crappy little digital camera in some sort of a housing, but he’s obsessed and he’s underwater fiddling with the camera the whole time. We call him Unlucky Leo because he’s almost had a parachute not open on him, he’s had a plane engine blow up on him.” It sounds as though DiCaprio is more suited to disaster movies than drama movies.
Norton concludes; “We’re in the water and after a while I realize that he’s not there, he’s not around. And I’m thinking I should go check on him. So I start swimming out, deep into the ocean and way off in the murk I see something like Jaws. It’s Leo and he’s coming towards me with really wide eyes and he’s making the signal that he’s out of air. But we’re only about 50 feet deep and all he had to do was go up.”
“But I gave him oxygen, we did the buddy-breathe thing. We go up, and he’s falling all over me like ‘buddy, buddy, you saved my life!’ It didn’t seem all that dramatic to me, but I guess it did to him.”
Check out our guide to the best adventure movies.