The person in brief
Leonardo DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles on 11 November 1974 and grew up in Los Feliz. He started in television commercials in the late 1980s, joined the last season of the sitcom Growing Pains in 1991, and had his first major film part opposite Robert De Niro in This Boy's Life (1993), picked from a shortlist of about 400 young actors. Later that year came What's Eating Gilbert Grape and, at 19, his first Oscar nomination.
Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997) made him one of the most famous faces in the world. What followed was slower and stranger than stardom usually is: he cut back his work, then built a long run of serious films, six of them with Martin Scorsese, from Gangs of New York (2002) to Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). He founded an environmental foundation in 1998 and the production company Appian Way in 2004, and in 2014 the United Nations named him a Messenger of Peace with a focus on climate change.
He has seven Academy Award acting nominations and one win, for The Revenant in 2016. The most recent nomination, for Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, came this year. He rarely gives interviews and keeps his private life out of view, so everything below sticks to the public record: the films, the work, the dates.
Why now? He turns 52 on Wednesday 11 November, and his birth time is about as solid as birth times get: Astro-Databank rates it AA, from the birth record (2:47 in the morning). That makes him a fair test case.
The reading
Read as the Chart Reader would read it for anyone, his chart has four headlines.
Sun and Venus in Scorpio, in the 2nd house. Scorpio is focus, depth and a certain guardedness. Venus beside the Sun adds charm, but charm that keeps something back. The 2nd house is about resources and values: what you build, and what you put your weight behind.
Libra rising, with a crowded 1st house. The Moon, Mercury, Uranus and Pluto all sit in Libra in the 1st house, the house of the self as others see it. Libra rising comes across as easy, good-looking and diplomatic; Pluto there adds a darker intensity that the easy manner doesn't quite hide. Mercury and Uranus are almost exactly together: a quick, restless, unpredictable mind.
Moon in Libra. The Moon is what you need to feel at home. In Libra it needs partnership, good company and a sense of fairness, and it tends to do its best work alongside someone.
Sun trine Saturn, exact. This is the tightest aspect in the chart, to a tenth of a degree. Saturn is the planet of time, effort and the reward that comes late, and his sits in Cancer in the 10th house, the house of career and reputation. It is the classic picture of a career built slowly, role by role, that lasts.
Two more details matter for the timeline: Jupiter in Pisces in the 6th house of daily work (generous, large-scale work), and that 10th-house Saturn, which the big slow cycles of his life keep returning to.
Life chapters, beside the sky
Every one of us goes through the same slow cycles: Jupiter comes back to where it was at birth every twelve years or so, the Moon's nodes every 18.6 years, Saturn at about 29, and Uranus reaches the opposite side of the sky in our early forties. We worked out the sky for each date below with the same engine that draws every chart on this site, and compared it with his birth chart. The events are from the public record; the sources are at the end.
1993: the nodal return, and the first nomination
In June 1993 the Moon's North Node came back to its exact birth position, within half a degree, and Jupiter was crossing his Ascendant. The nodal return is traditionally read as a moment of direction: the first time you're shown, clearly, which way your life is pointing. That year he played Tobias Wolff opposite De Niro in This Boy's Life and then Arnie in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Director Lasse Hallström had thought him too good-looking for the part, and cast him after he proved the most observant actor in the room. The nomination came in February 1994. If a cycle can point, this one pointed.
1998: the second Jupiter return, and the step back
Jupiter, the planet of growth and luck, came home to 8° Pisces in the early weeks of 1998, just as Titanic became the highest-grossing film in the world. The textbook reading writes itself: expansion, fame, abundance. And the fame was real (the press called it "Leo-mania"). But at the Oscars that March, where Titanic won eleven awards, he wasn't nominated. Then, instead of taking everything on offer, he cut back his work. Jupiter's return brought the size; what he did with it was a Saturn move, not a Jupiter one. That year he also set up his environmental foundation.
2004: the Saturn return, and building his own house
Saturn came back to 18° Cancer, its exact birth position in his 10th house of career, in the summer of 2004. The Saturn return is the best known of the cycles: around 29, life asks whether you are building on your own foundations. In 2004 he founded Appian Way, named after the old Roman road, and co-produced and starred in Scorsese's The Aviator, which brought his second nomination and a Golden Globe. A production company of his own, in the year the career planet came home, is about as neat as these things get.
2010: Jupiter again, and Saturn on the Ascendant
February 2010 had two things at once: Jupiter back on its birth degree for the third time, and Saturn crossing his Ascendant, the point of the self. Jupiter says scale; Saturn on the Ascendant says weight. He spent that year in two of the biggest films of his career, Shutter Island (released that month) and Christopher Nolan's Inception (July), playing two haunted, grieving men. Big and heavy at once: both planets got their way.
2014 to 2016: Pluto and Uranus on the career planet, and the Oscar
In September 2014 the UN named him a Messenger of Peace for climate. By February 2016 Pluto was opposite his 10th-house Saturn, Uranus was square to it within a degree, and Neptune sat on his birth Jupiter. The two slowest, most disruptive planets were both working on the career planet: the kind of sky astrologers associate with a long-standing structure breaking open. On 28 February 2016, after four acting nominations without a win, he won Best Actor for The Revenant, a punishingly physical role that critics praised for putting the body before words.
2018 to 2019: the Uranus opposition, and an ageing actor on screen
Uranus reached the opposite point to its birth position (and to his Mercury, which sits beside it) in March 2019, within half a degree. This is the cycle people call the midlife transit: the moment you look at the life you've built and ask what still fits. After a four-year break from acting, he came back in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as Rick Dalton, an ageing television actor anxious that his time has passed. It brought his sixth acting nomination. A role is a role, not a confession, but as a piece of casting for a Uranus opposition it is hard to beat.
2026: this birthday
On 11 November 2026, Pluto is trine to his Ascendant within a tenth of a degree and Neptune is opposite it. We don't make forecasts on this site, and a trine from Pluto is a slow, quiet aspect rather than an event. If anything, it describes a year in which the public image shifts without a fight, which suits a man who has said he cares more about the work than about how he looks.
Where it fits, and where it doesn't
| Placement | What the reading says | What the life shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sun trine Saturn, Saturn in the 10th | A slow, lasting career; reward comes late | Four acting nominations over 22 years before the win; still nominated at 51 | Fits |
| Saturn return 2004 | Building on your own foundations | Founded Appian Way and co-produced The Aviator the same year | Fits |
| Moon in Libra | Works best in partnership | Six films with Scorsese; a second film with Kate Winslet at her suggestion | Fits |
| Sun and Venus in Scorpio, 2nd house | Puts weight behind what he values | A foundation at 23, a UN role, climate documentaries; also criticised for private jets and yachts | Partly |
| Jupiter return 1998 | Expansion, luck, abundance | Huge fame, but no nomination for Titanic, and he chose to work less | Partly |
| Libra rising, four planets in the 1st house | The self on display, sociable, easy to read | Rarely gives interviews; famously guarded about his private life | Doesn't |
| Mercury on Uranus | Quick, restless, unpredictable; changes direction | Known for long loyalties, slow preparation and returning to the same directors for decades | Doesn't |
Two "doesn't" rows are worth a second look. The crowded Libra 1st house describes a public face, and he certainly has one; what it doesn't describe is how firmly he keeps the rest out of view. That is the Scorpio Sun winning the argument. And Mercury on Uranus may be better seen in the parts the camera doesn't film: the restlessness that walked away from American Psycho and a Star Wars part, and that keeps choosing the morally complicated role over the heroic one. Astrology tends to describe pulls, not outcomes. On the whole, his chart's strongest signature, the slow Saturn story, is the one his life tells most clearly.
In his own words
On film, he has called it a "relevant art form, like a painting or sculpture." And looking back on Titanic in 2000: "I'll never reach that state of popularity again, and I don't expect to." Both are quoted in his Wikipedia biography.
Sources and image credits
- Birth data: Astro-Databank, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rodden Rating AA (birth record), checked by hand 9 Nov 2026.
- Life and career: Leonardo DiCaprio, Wikipedia, read 9 Nov 2026 (early career, Titanic, Appian Way, the foundation, the UN appointment, the Academy Awards list).
- Sky positions: worked out by Stars at Birth for noon Los Angeles time on each date (15 June 1993, 23 March 1998, 10 July and 15 August 2004, 19 February 2010, 28 February 2016, 1 March 2019, 11 November 2026).
- Photos, from Wikimedia Commons: 2002, Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0; 2010, Siebbi, CC BY 3.0; 2016, Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0; 2025, Raph_PH, CC BY 4.0 (links in the credits under the collage). The collage as a whole is released under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Stars at Birth is not affiliated with Leonardo DiCaprio.
