Last night was a big screening/premiere for Martin Scorsese’s film Shutter Island, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Michelle Williams and Ben Kingsley, amongst others. The stars treated it like a premiere, and dressed up in their best cocktail attire. While I think Leonardo (above, with his director) looks great in his suit, Leo on the red carpet usually disappoints me. He’s the kind of guy who looks hotter when he’s posing for a magazine rather than in “candid” shots. Just as well, I suppose. He’s still cute.

Shutter Island is based on a Dennis Lehane novel of the same name. The story is set in the 1950s, and DiCaprio plays a marshal sent out to investigate a homicide at a facility for the criminally insane. DiCaprio talked extensively about the film in an interview in The Telegraph:

“The movie is ultimately about trauma and the dark side of humanity and it was shocking how deep and dark we had to go emotionally with this character,” he says. “When I first read the screenplay, I didn’t quite realise what we needed to put up on the screen, and it became a sort of giant emotional jigsaw puzzle with Marty and me realising we had to push it further and further for people to identify with the trauma.”

“Usually when I’m on a movie set, I’m able to detach myself from the process at the end of the day and go home and learn my lines for the next day, but this situation was a whole lot different. There were a couple of weeks when I was in a hole and it was the deepest I’ve ever gone with a character emotionally.”

“This movie is an interesting one to publicise because it’s being advertised as a Hitchcockian-type psychological thriller, but, at the end of the day, what Martin Scorsese does best is depict something about humanity and who we are as people. He focuses on the emotions of the characters. So, as much as style plays a part of this, and as much as people will be attracted to the scares and the thrills of it, it’s a story about who we are as people.”

Unlike his peers Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, he does, however, manage to maintain a semblance of a normal life, often going out unnoticed with his friend to clubs and restaurants, something he deems essential for his sanity.

“I go out and have a drink every once in a while,” he says with a grin. “Ooh, I know that’s controversial, isn’t it? I sometimes go on a vacation, too. I take what I do very seriously, and when I’m on the set that’s all I focus on, so my vice is to hang out with my friends and talk about absolutely nothing of importance whatsoever and act like a complete idiot because I’ve got to filter out a lot of the serious stuff I’m dealing with all the time. It’s like therapy to just be a complete idiot with my friends and it’s fantastic.”

He is discussing two more projects with Scorsese, one of them based on a true story about Wall Street corruption and the other a Viking adventure, although neither is by any means definite.

“These last couple of films have taken a lot out of me so I don’t know what I’m going to do next,” he says. “I have no idea and it’s kind of a cool place to be. This year is going to be the year of really taking care of myself because I’ve reached 35 and I’ve taken a lot of things seriously, maybe too seriously at times, so I’m going to make sure that whatever I do next and whatever choices I make are really right for me. And we’ll see where that takes me.”

[From The Telegraph]

Michelle Williams was there too, wearing a stunning one-shoulder cream dress. I love her styling too – good hair, great makeup, and she looks like she’s gained a little weight back after looking a little too thin several months ago. Michelle is rumored to be dating Ryan Gosling these days, but unfortunately, he didn’t show up last night:

Mick Jagger was there too, with his girlfriend L’Wren Scott. I love that Mick adores really tall women. He must be a leg man.

Ben Kingsley is seriously one of my favorite actors! Give some love to Krishna (his real name, by the way)!

Mark Ruffalo and his wife (girlfriend?) Sunrise. I love Mark too. He’s lovely.

And last and definitely least, we have AnnaLynne McCord trying to pull focus in a gross peek-a-boo catsuit. Get a job, honey.

‘Shutter Island’ premiere pics from February 17, 2010. Credit: Andres Otero/ WENN.