The bear scene in The Revenant was nothing compared to it: 18 years ago, DiCaprio found himself trapped in the face of a great white shark!

Nearly 10 years before he faced off against a fearsome bear in The Revenant—an anthology sequence that posed no threat to him after the creature was digitally augmented—Leonardo DiCaprio nearly died when he came face-to-face with another animal just as terrifying. And this time very real.

Indeed, as he revealed in 2014 On the set of The Ellen ShowThe American actor, famous for his roles in Titanic and Inception, found himself in a diving cage one day… with a great white shark!

Talking about his fight to protect the environment and especially endangered species, the actor recounted an elephant-back excursion in Nepal in search of tigers, as well as this famous submarine dive that could have gone too far. wrong

“He was in the cage with me.”

“I went scuba diving to find sharks”she said.

“I was afraid of sharks, and when I shot Blood Diamond in 2006, I found myself trapped in a cage with a great white shark. It was extraordinary, incredible. It was a giant great white shark. It was in a cage. Me.”

“I was told it had never happened in 30 years, but somehow the tuna got stuck on the top of the cage and the shark came up and tried to bite it and it went into the cage with me. Half of his body is back. And the fourth, and I fell down, he was so far away from me And he gave me several blows to the jaw, but I survived.”

Leonardo DiCaprio, who also fights to save sharks (90% of which are removed from the oceans, as he also specified), nevertheless wanted to congratulate the action of the organization that offered him this extraordinary experience:

“They do a great job protecting the sharks. I don’t want to repeat that, but I don’t want to discredit their work because they do a really good job. But it was absolutely terrifying.”

Will we one day see Leonardo DiCaprio facing a great white shark in a movie?

While you wait to find out, (re)discover our top 5 movie sharks…