Over the past few years, I’ve really grown to like Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s not one of my imaginary lovers, like Clive Owen or Gerard Butler, but I respect Leo as an actor, and I like who he is as a celebrity. He’s interesting most of the time, but he keeps most of his stuff on the down-low, which is good too. He’s been doing totally solid work too – he was a very solid lead in Inception, although… here’s the thing: I buy Leo as the lead in a thriller, a straight drama, even an action film. But even though his most famous performance was as a romantic lead (in Titanic), I just don’t buy it. He rarely has chemistry with his leading ladies, and I’m not buying it. Anyway, Leo is the cover boy for the new issue of Rolling Stone. The cover shot (below) is nice and brooding, but it’s still good to know that Leo can pull out the old-school Teen Beat shirtless-on-a-bed pose to sell himself (above).

In the box office smash Inception , Leonardo DiCaprio spends most of his time inside people’s dreams. But what’s going inside DiCaprio’s head in real life? In the new issue of Rolling Stone, on sale at newsstands today, associate editor Brian Hiatt finds out. “[My stomach churns over] really stupid stuff,” DiCaprio reveals. “Things that shouldn’t make you anxious whatsoever. It’s crazy how your mind will become this database to make you worry about things that are so arbitrary. I have a well-organized life, and I’ve put a lot of thought into the things that I do, and then, you know, my stomach will be…I’ll just be sitting there, totally anxious about something ridiculous.”

In one of the most intimate portraits yet of the intensely private actor, DiCaprio relaxes enough to smoke a few cigars, have some beers, sing the Cheers theme song (badly) and open up on everything from his wild youth as Hollywood’s hottest heartthrob to a recent brush with death:

On growing up:
“I was essentially a dwarf with the biggest mouth in the world. I would talk back to anyone and be up for any fight, and when you tell a kid that’s three years older than you to shove it, you’re going to get your ass beat…I was a real punk, there’s no question about it.”

On partying in the pre-TMZ age:
“I got to be wild and nuts, and I didn’t suffer as much as people do now, where they have to play it so safe that they ruin their credibility. I didn’t care what anyone thought…. It was also about avoiding the tornado of chaos, of potential downfall. It was, ‘Wow, how lucky are we to not have hung out with that crowd or done those things?’ My two main competitors in the beginning, the blond-haired kids I went to audition with, one hung himself and the other died of a heroin overdose… . I was never into drugs at all. There aren’t stories of me in a pool of my own vomit in a hotel room on the Hollywood Strip.”

On dating:
“I had better success meeting girls before Titanic. My interactions with them didn’t have all the stigma behind it, not to mention there wasn’t a perception of her talking to me for only one reason.”

On dealing with his Titanic fame:
“It was like there was a separate entity out there,” he says. “Not to use a James Cameron reference, but it was like being in a little bit of an avatar.” He cringes. “That’s going to sound extremely self- indulgent. It’s going to sound like, ‘Oh, I was a frickin’ avatar,’ give me a break, I’m already vomiting.”

[From Rolling Stone]

Oh, yes, Leo has such a tough life, what with all of the supermodels and the huge paychecks and everything. Woe is Leo. No, he doesn’t seem that self-pitying, but it’s there, a little bit. Mostly, I just think Leo spends way too much time thinking about all of the negativity Titanic brought into his life, rather than all of the opportunities it gave him. Eh. When will Leo ever answer my questions about his dirt-lip?

Photos courtesy of Rolling Stone and HuffPo.