Leonardo DiCaprio is reclining against the couch of his Beverly Hills hotel suite, tossing tic tacs into his mouth and sipping herbal tea. In his navy blue Lacoste shirt and dark jeans, he is the personification of California cool.
But the demeanour is deceptive. DiCaprio, best known for playing eccentric billionaires (like Howard Hughes in The Aviator), or a spunky poor kid who falls in love with a rich man's daughter on an ill-fated steamer (a small movie called Titanic), is now conveying a different identity - and one on a rather more urgent mission.
DiCaprio has been throwing his weight behind a documentary called The 11th Hour, a film he narrated and produced. In the piece, which runs about 90 minutes, DiCaprio focuses on climate change, global warming and the impending impact this has on the world.
The actor is quick to shoot down the notion that he came at the subject with the authority of an expert; he says he is anything but. Also, he continually refers to, and gives full credit to, Al Gore and his Oscar-winning documentary on the same subject, An Inconvenient Truth.
'A lot of this really came from not being an expert on this issue,' DiCaprio says. 'Unlike a lot of scientists, it's not like I've devoted my life to it. For me, it just became a question of becoming more aware of what's going on in the planet. In that sense, you don't need to be an expert to see the changing weather that is happening in the world, the profound droughts. Hurricane Katrina was a wake-up call for a lot of people. Things are changing on this planet that are indescribable, and it's about making connections and calling people who have made it their lives to concentrate on this issue.'
For the project, DiCaprio teamed up with writer-director sisters Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners, who are also working on a narrative feature on the subject for Ridley Scott. The sisters, along with DiCaprio, then set about amassing scientists, politicians, environmentalists and experts in sustainable design, to deliver insight.