Leo clueless about his titanic success

NEW YORK —  “Not much .... “ This is movie star Leonardo DiCaprio’s answer when Barbara Walters asks him what he has learned about success and failure.

Pressed for more expression, DiCaprio -- anchored protectively for this interview between his “Catch Me If You Can” co-star Tom Hanks and his director Steven Spielberg -- manages to muster up, “I think ultimately, success is good. Failure not so good ... uh .... “ To that, we respond with “Duh!”

Walters’ interview with Di- Caprio, his first TV sit-down since 1997, airs Friday on ABC’s “20/20.” The young actor, who seems shy and sensitive to the extreme for someone who has chosen a public career, does expound a bit more fully on what his life turned into after the mega-success of “Titanic.”

He says, “There’s no handbook for fame ... there’s no handbook for being splashed on the cover of People when you didn’t want to be there, or the cover of the National Enquirer. I had nobody to talk to, nobody to guide me. But on that same token, I’m not at all going to sit here and say that I’m not completely grateful and feel completely blessed for everything that’s happened in my career.”

Hmm -- not to be mean to Leo, but I must ask here, what did he expect after they told him he’d star in one of the biggest-budget films of all-time -- “Titanic”? Did he think he wouldn’t be on the covers of People and the National Enquirer? And didn’t he have people like Michael Ovitz he could talk to and guide him? These days, it seems to me that he is surrounded by protectors and handlers who treat him as if he were made of spun sugar.