We’ve been talking about Camila Morrone for almost two years. She began dating Leonardo DiCaprio in early 2018, when she was just 20 years old, although she reportedly knew Leo before that, when she was a teenager. That entire time, she’s been described as Argentinian, and I guess I’ve never heard her speak, so I just assumed that meant she grew up in Argentina. She did not. She grew up in LA, with her Argentinian parents trying to break into the acting world. Her mother, Lucila Sola, dated Al Pacino for a while too. Anyway, Camila has a new movie, Mickey and the Bear. It’s an indie film and maybe it’s getting some awards hype and some comparisons to Winter’s Bone. To promote the film, Camila did an interview with the LA Times, which you can read here. She mostly talks about her life and the movie, but of course she says something about DiCaprio too. Some highlights:

Her actor parents: “I saw them struggle their whole lives to be financially independent actors, and seeing them go through that, I was kind of turned off to it. There was so much angst around acting, and it was such a topic of conversation — never knowing where your next paycheck is going to come from. I thought: ‘I’m going to go to college. I’m going to have a normal 9-to-5 job.’ And of course, I ended up exactly like them.”

‘Mickey’ compared to ‘Winter’s Bone’: “I think people are seeing comparisons between the two films because of the setting and the cold and all that stuff — and I guess the outfits are grungy and similar. I mean, it’s crazy. Jennifer Lawrence is a mastermind. She has no training and she’s just so naturally good. I definitely don’t let any of it go to my head. I think the biggest thing is not believing any of your press.”

She’s bothered by the judgment about her relationship: “There’s so many relationships in Hollywood — and in the history of the world — where people have large age gaps. I just think anyone should be able to date who they want to date.” Still, she said she gets why the public is fascinated by her relationship — “I probably would be curious about it too” — but is hopeful that as her career grows, she won’t always be mentioned alongside her boyfriend. “I think more and more now that people are seeing the film, I’m slowly getting an identity outside of that. Which is frustrating, because I feel like there should always be an identity besides who you’re dating. … I understand the association, but I’m confident that will continue to slip away and be less of a conversation.”

She didn’t want to be typecast as a hot girl: Before she got “Mickey and the Bear,” Morrone hadn’t worked for a year. The parts she was being offered weren’t the ones she wanted to take: the mean girl, the hot cheerleader, the lead’s girlfriend. Usually, those offers came after a casting director had only seen her image online — a girl who’d had “2½ hours of hair and makeup wearing perfectly fitted clothes…I felt so ashamed of my modeling history when I first got into acting, so I tried to hide that part of my life, because I didn’t want to be looked at as too sexy for a role. I’ve heard, ‘Oh, she’s not homey-looking,’ or ‘too voluptuous’ or — I don’t want to say sexy, because then I sound like I think of myself that way — which I don’t — but that’s oftentimes it.”

[From The LA Times]

Honestly, she handled all of those questions with more deftness than I was expecting. She wasn’t bemoaning her hotness and sexiness, she wasn’t really whining about only being known as Leonardo DiCaprio’s hot young girlfriend. At one point, the LAT notes that it bugs Camila that people assume that Leo is helping her get roles (they don’t quote her about it though), to which I say… Leo is probably the one telling his friends to offer her all of those hot-girl roles which she refuses to do. But yeah, I buy that Leo isn’t trying to Svengali her career. He would probably prefer if she didn’t work at all and she was just on call for him 24-7. Ah, The Leonardo DiCaprio Girlfriend Experience. You get name recognition and a terse goodbye on your 25th birthday.

Photos courtesy of WENN.