Leonardo DiCaprio says he wants to
“stick my teeth” into the role of J. Edgar Hoover.
DiCaprio has signed on to play the lead
role in the upcoming Clint Eastwood biopic of FBI director Hoover.
Eastwood reportedly personally wooed
DiCaprio for the role.
“I'm excited about playing such a
duplicitous character in American history,” he told reporters at
the premiere of his latest film Inception in London, UK daily
the Telegraph reported. “I want to stick my teeth into that
role.”
The screenplay is being written by
openly gay Dustin Lance Black, who won a 2008 Oscar for Milk,
the Gus Van Sant biopic film about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay
politician to be elected in the United States.
While Hoover vehemently denied rumors
that he was gay, evidence gathered after his 1972 death indicates
otherwise – including the fact that many of his closest friends were
closeted men.
In confirming his participation in the
film last month, DiCaprio said the film was about the “secret life”
of Hoover, such as his involvement in the Vietnam war, and the lives
of Martin Luther King and President John F. Kennedy.
Rumors that Hoover was a crossdresser
persist to this day, but DiCaprio brushed off suggestions that he'll
appear in the movie wearing a dress.
When asked if he'll be wearing a dress,
DiCaprio answered: “Not as of yet. No, we haven't done the fitting
for those. So, I don't think so.”
The thirty-five-year-old actor played
gay in the 1995 film Total Eclipse, in which he played French
poet Arthur Rimbaud.