Los Angeles – December 9, 2025 – Leonardo DiCaprio has been crowned TIME magazine’s Entertainer of the Year for 2025, a recognition that arrives at the peak of one of the most celebrated chapters of his 35-year career.
The announcement comes just 24 hours after his latest film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, stormed the Golden Globe nominations with nine nods — the most of any movie this season — instantly installing it as the clear frontrunner heading into the Oscars. The dark, wildly comic action-thriller has been hailed by critics as DiCaprio’s finest performance to date and the first true collaboration between two of modern cinema’s most revered figures.
In the film, DiCaprio plays Bob “Ghetto Pat” Ferguson, a burned-out, weed-loving former 1960s radical now living off the grid in Northern California. When his estranged teenage daughter (played by breakout star Chase Infiniti) is kidnapped by a psychotic ex-comrade turned far-right militia leader (Sean Penn), Ferguson reunites his old crew for a chaotic, cross-country rescue mission laced with betrayal, gunfire, and biting political satire. Critics have praised the way DiCaprio locates both absurdity and aching humanity in a character who is equal parts stoner slacker and broken father, with many calling it the richest, most unpredictable work of his career.
TIME’s cover story celebrates DiCaprio as “one of the last true movie stars,” a performer who has repeatedly reinvented himself while remaining unmistakably himself. From his astonishing teenage turn in 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape — where, at just 19, he stole scenes from Johnny Depp and earned his first Oscar nomination — to the raw, bear-mauling survival epic The Revenant that finally won him the Academy Award in 2016, DiCaprio has built a filmography of almost unrivaled depth and daring.
- Among the performances now being revisited in the glow of his new triumph:
- Catch Me If You Can (2002), Steven Spielberg’s breezy con-man caper, where DiCaprio’s effortless charm opposite Tom Hanks still holds a 96 % Rotten Tomatoes score.
- The Departed (2006), his first Best Picture winner with Martin Scorsese, featuring a live-wire turn as an undercover cop unraveling under pressure.
- Shutter Island (2010), a psychological descent into grief and madness that many regard as one of his most haunting, psychologically layered roles.
- Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Scorsese’s sprawling crime epic, where DiCaprio delivered what some critics called the most morally complex character of his career as the weak-willed, complicit Ernest Burkhart.
Even his lesser-seen documentaries, such as the 2019 climate-crisis film Ice on Fire, have earned strong reviews for moving beyond alarmism to spotlight real solutions.
One Battle After Another marks the long-awaited first pairing of DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson, a director who has spent 25 years of admiration for the actor. Anderson has described the film as a “loose riff” on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, infused with the manic energy of 1970s paranoid thrillers and the emotional stakes of a broken family trying to rebuild itself. The supporting cast — including Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Benicio del Toro, and Wood Harris — has also drawn raves, but it is DiCaprio’s unpredictable, emotionally exposed performance that has become the season’s defining talking point.
With the film already crossing $850 million worldwide and critics’ groups lining up to honor it, DiCaprio’s selection as TIME’s Entertainer of the Year feels less like a capstone and more like a coronation. At 51, he remains a box-office draw, a critical darling, and one of the few actors whose name alone can green-light a major studio project. More importantly, he continues to use his platform for urgent environmental advocacy, a cause he has championed since the late 1990s.
In a year when Hollywood has grappled with franchise fatigue and streaming uncertainty, DiCaprio and One Battle After Another have reminded audiences why they still flock to theaters: for original, ambitious, star-driven stories that only someone of his caliber can deliver.
As awards season accelerates toward the Golden Globes in January and the Oscars in March, one thing is clear: Leonardo DiCaprio is not just surviving the changing industry — he is still shaping it.
