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.