Using her opening monologue to tease the “One Battle After Another” actor about being MIA at the Palm Springs Film Festival the night prior, hostess Handler joked, “Leo’s here, thank God … He was trapped on a boat in St. Barts. It was just like ‘The Titanic’ but worse, because Jeff Bezos was there.”
DiCaprio wasn’t above laughing at himself, captured cracking a warm smile at Handler’s punchline.
Over the New Year’s holiday, the Oscar-winner was spotted on Bezos’ super-yacht along with his girlfriend Vittoria Ceretti and the e-commerce mogul’s wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
While the “Wolf of Wall Street” star did make it to Sunday’s Critics’ Choice honors in Santa Monica, California, flight restrictions following the U.S.’s early Saturday incursion into Venezuela reportedly left him without a ride to Palm Springs.
“Movies are still meant to be experienced, together, in a theatre,” the Hollywood veteran said. “Right now, that belief matters more than ever.”
He went on to add, “Original films are harder to make and harder to protect. But movies still matter, not content, but cinema. Stories made by people meant to be shared in a dark room in a communal experience.”