Leonardo DiCaprio is taking on a new role, that of a concerned global citizen.

The Oscar nominee spent three years making the environmental documentary The 11th Hour, which opens Friday, and DiCaprio is hoping it will spur audiences to action.

“That's the main intent: To have an audience leave this film being scared of the reality of what these people are saying, but also feel galvanized to do something about it,” he said. “To feel like all of us as individuals, as a global community, are responsible and need to change the way that we do things.”

DiCaprio produced and co-wrote the film, and points out “I know that I'm not an environmental scientist and I know that I'm not an expert. I wanted to take the position of a concerned citizen of the world. As someone who, I guess you could say, is aware of environmental issues like global warming and all of the other issues that we talk about in the movie, I could give the scientists and the experts a format in which they could speak freely and openly without having to argue the points anymore - because the consensus is there in the scientific community.”

DiCaprio wore many hats on set. He serves as narrator, and spent more than 100 hours in the editing room, trimming the dense material into a brisk 90 minutes.

“A lot of this information is very hard to wrap your head around,” DiCaprio said. “These are very complicated issues and we didn't want it to be sort of intellectual baby food at the end of the day. We wanted these people to really talk about how complex this issue is. But the most important thing of all is whether or not the audience will be emotionally affected by it.”

Source: Boston Globe Aug. 23, 2007

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