Here are some photos from the Art Directors Guild Awards over the weekend. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill attended, although it felt like Leo took some pains to not pose with Jonah – who seems more and more like Leo’s clingy girlfriend – on the red carpet. But never fear, Leo and Jonah presented an award together, which was yet another in a long line of wonderful moments that I’m sure Jonah will commemorate with a Lovely Leo Collage.

In other Leo news, his Oscar campaign continues to hum along. It feels like Leo is doing more public appearances and awards shows than any other Best Actor Oscar nominee – which means, to me, that Leo wants it. It’s like he’s saying to the Academy, “If you’re not going to give it to Chiwetel and Matthew McConaughey is my main competition, then I’m really going to go for it.” Remember how Leo allegedly (or not so much) told a fan that he had never done cocaine? Well, Leo is now directly saying that in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times. You can read the full piece here, and here are some highlights:

Growing up in the bad part of LA: “I try to tell my godson, who lives close to that area, what it was like, how there used to be a major prostitution ring on my street corner, crime and violence everywhere. It really was like ‘Taxi Driver’ in a lot of ways,” DiCaprio says, puffing away on an e-cigarette. “And I’m not sure he believes me. It’s hipster central, totally gentrified now. The Waterbed Hotel?” DiCaprio laughs. “I don’t think that’s there anymore.”

Income disparity in America & The Wolf of Wall Street: “Who am I to talk about this?” DiCaprio says, opening a second bottle of Coke, warming to the subject. “It goes back to that neighborhood. It came from the fact that I grew up very poor and I got to see the other side of the spectrum.”

He was a scholarship kid at the UCLA Lab School: “It was like this little Garden of Eden. There was a park and kids were playing in the sunshine and everything was multicultural, everything was peaceful, every religion and race and attitude was respected equally. And if I went to play with my friends, I would drive to Beverly Hills and go in their backyard and there’d be a waterfall there. I mean, a waterfall! In the backyard? What the …! When I went back to the public school system, it was like — boom — this is reality. I got beat up the day I arrived because I had the attitude,” and here the 39-year-old actor shifts into a blissed-out hippie voice, “of everyone living harmoniously with one another.” He laughs. “That was the motivational thing that happened to me in my life. I was 15, and I said to my mom, ‘I want to be an actor. Please take me to auditions.’ Because I had to get out of that public school system.”

He’s never done drugs: “Never done it,” DiCaprio says emphatically, talking about drugs. “That’s because I saw this stuff literally every day when I was 3 or 4 years old. So Hollywood was a walk in the park for me…. I’d go to parties and it was there and, yeah, there’s that temptation. Hollywood is a very volatile place where artists come in and they essentially say they want to belong. It’s incredibly vulnerable to be an actor and also get criticism at a young age when you’re formulating who you are. We’ve seen a lot of people fall victim to that, and it’s very unfortunate.”

What Marty Scorsese has taught him: “I’m always a bit more, ‘Let’s make sure people get that moment,’ and Marty says, ‘No kid. We don’t need a voice-over there. Just let the audience sit with that.’ And that’s been the great learning experience for me with him. You’re always looking for that one, definitive answer, but it’s always more satisfying if you let people do the work themselves and reach their own conclusions. That doesn’t mean the answer’s not there. It’s just not obvious.”

[From the LA Times]

Is it just me or is Leo very likeable in this interview? Maybe I just forget how likeable he can be when he’s giving a rare one-on-one interview. But Leo doesn’t show this side of himself very often, talking about education and poverty in a personal way like this. Also: do you think it’s humble-bragging when Leo says Marty refers to him as “kid”? I think it’s like, “Hey, I’m so tight with him that I can call him ‘Marty’ and he calls me ‘kid’ because I’m like a son to him.”

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.