Hollywood Royalty

DICAPRIO: I definitely sought out the relationship with Martin Scorsese. It was important to me to find somebody I could trust. It's a weird thing to put your performance in another person's hands. We so often sit in rooms with directors and you hear their vision about a specific project, but there's a huge difference between what they say and what actually shows up on screen.

PITT: Do directors want you to [play a version] of them?

DICAPRIO: Sometimes you get that feeling, yeah.

MIRREN: It doesn't happen to women. You get to play their fantasy instead. But you know, [the industry] is always trying to put you in a box, and you're always having to fight your way out of it. They don't want you to grow up or grow older or change, so it's great when a role comes up that allows you to take that next step. It happened with me on "Prime Suspect." Suddenly I was allowed to look like a woman of the age that I was. I didn't have to have glamorous lighting. I didn't have to wear makeup. It was fabulously liberating, and it's really why I'm still working, because I was allowed to step forward.

Forest, you've played roles that weren't actually written for black actors.

WHITAKER: I had moments where the directors were open enough to let me do that, yeah. In "Good Morning, Vietnam," my character was written as a nerdy Jewish guy. In "The Color of Money," the character was originally a Yuppie.