When Natalie Portman Was Dropped From Romeo + Juliet Owing To A 7 Years Of Age Gap With Leonardo DiCaprio: “It Was A Complicated Situation”

Natalie Portman could have been Leonardo DiCaprio’s lover in Romeo + Juliet but couldn’t because of the age gap. Read!

By
Kanu Priya
- May 4, 2023 | 5:27 PM IST
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Leonardo DiCaprio, currently rocking at 48, has often been trolled in recent years for dating women as young as 25 years old. Well, what the actor does in his personal life is his own business as age is, after all, just a number. But when it comes to his on-screen partners, age actually plays an important role. Natalie Portman was actually fired from the movie Romeo + Juliet because she was quite young compared to Leo. Scroll on to learn more.

Romeo + Juliet was a romantic-crime drama inspired by the novel of the same name by William Shakespeare. The film was released in 1996, and Leonardo and Claire Danes played the leading roles in the film. The movie performed fairly well at the box office, and the actors’ performances got crucially acclaimed.

While Claire Danes did a fab job as Juliet, she was not the first choice for the role. As per Hello Giggles, Natalie Portman was all set to play the role of the leading lady in Romeo + Juliet opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. The actress had already proved her acting prowess in her debut film Leon: The Professional and director Baz Luhrmann was keen on signing the young starlet as her Juliet. It is to note that in Shakespeare’s story, the female lead was actually 13 years old as well. Despite everything being in Natalie’s favour, she was dropped from the film because of Leonardo DiCaprio.

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It turns out that Leonardo DiCaprio was 21 and Natalie Portman was 13 when Baz Luhrmann was making Romeo + Juliet. The Titanic actor was already a global crush, and the director did not wish to oust him from the film. So, the makers fired Nat as the age gap between the leads could have been problematic. As per The Things, while talking about it in an interview, the Thor actress said, “It was a complicated situation and […] at the time I was 13 and Leonardo was 21 and it wasn’t appropriate in the eyes of the film company or the director, Baz. It was kind of a mutual decision too that it just wasn’t going to be right at the time.”

After dropping Natalie from the movie, the director roped in Claire Danes to play the role of Juliet opposite Leonardo, and both the actors did a fine job.

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