Leonardo DiCaprio Has Escaped Death Three Times: "If a Cat Has Nine Lives, I Think I've Used a Few"

The Revenant lead actor reveals all the times he has almost been killed

Much like his death-defying characters, Leonardo DiCaprio has found himself in some seriously nerve-racking situations. 

For his latest Golden-Globe nominated role in The Revenant, the 41-year-old Hollywood staple must work tirelessly to avoid death as he portrays a stranded fur-trapper in the American wilderness. While it is ultimately all make believe, the actor is no stranger to similar situations off-screen. In fact, he has faced his own brushes with death on more than one occasion. 

"My friends have named me the person they least want to do extreme adventures with because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster," DiCaprio told told Wired. "If a cat has nine lives, I think I've used a few."

In detail, the Golden Globe winner explained how he once avoided getting eaten by a great white shark in South Africa after it had accidentally jumped into his cage after a mishap while launching tuna into the water. 

"The great white took about five or six snaps an arm's length away from my head," he said. "The guys there said that has never happened in the 30 years they'd been doing it."

On a second occasion, DiCaprio recounted a flight he took to Russia that almost ended entirely in flames. 

"It was right after 'Sully' Sullenberger landed in the Hudson. I was sitting there looking out at the wing, and the entire wing exploded in a fireball. I was the only one looking out at the moment this giant turbine exploded like a comet," he remembered. "They shut all the engines off for a couple of minutes, so you're just sitting there gliding with absolutely no sound, and nobody in the plane was saying anything."

He eventually touched ground back in New York after a fortunate emergency landing.

His final near-death experience came during a gutsy tandem skydive. The actor almost fell to his death after his parachute got knotted up. 

"I didn't even think about the extra chute, so I thought we were just plummeting to our death. [His partner] pulled the second, and that was knotted up too. He just kept shaking it and shaking it in midair, as all my friends were, you know, what felt like half a mile above me, and I'm plummeting toward earth," he joked, revealing that the parachute had finally unknotted.

"The fun part was when he said, 'You're probably going to break your legs on the way down, because we're going too fast now.'"

We're not so sure we'd use the word fun to describe such an experience, but we admire DiCaprio's ability to brush it off all the same.