As Disclosure Day hits the promotional circuit, Steven Spielberg has revisited his collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio on Catch Me If You Can.
The masterful filmmaker is back, and he’s leaning into one of his oldest loves: science fiction. After roughly fifteen years during which he directed many films grounded more in reality (War Horse, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, The Fabelmans), this is an opportunity to remind ourselves—even if we never forgot—that before Disclosure Day, he also carried us through big, crowd-pleasing adventure sagas.
Perhaps it’s precisely because he senses the box-office potential of his latest project that Steven Spielberg has been unusually visible in the media promoting Disclosure Day. We’ve recently seen the director of Jaws amplify his presence on television and online, and he’s been looking back over his long and storied career. This is also a chance for him to detail a little bit of how he works with actors by revisiting his 2002 collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio on Catch Me If You Can.
DAVID NOTGOODENOUGH
Today, this is a common question about directors—what group do they belong to, and how many takes do they typically shoot? Clint Eastwood is known for keeping it tight at one or two, while David Fincher is famous for stacking takes into the dozens. On the The Rewatchables podcast, Spielberg explained that with Leonardo DiCaprio on Catch Me If You Can, the number was unusually high:
“Leo likes to watch his own takes. He likes to go to the monitor and see what he just shot. And that gives him ideas. He says: ‘Let me do one more, one more.’ So, it’s possible I might do 9, 10, 11 takes, because Leo feels he hasn’t pushed it as far as possible. So I waited for Leo to tell me when he thought he had the right take.”
This approach might be explained, in the case of Catch Me If You Can, by the distinctive nature of the role. The flashy con artist Frank Abagnale Jr., as portrayed by DiCaprio, is a multi-faceted character who also acts, slipping between roles as a pilot, a teacher, and a doctor, with as many physical transformations to match as there are disguises.
A production anecdote that allowed Spielberg to generalize about his own approach to takes and working with actors:
“I’m not going to be some kind of big supervisor as a director, telling, ‘No, I think we were great on the fourth take’ and moving on. If we’re pressed for time, if I feel we have to hustle to avoid losing the light, then, indeed, I’ll push it a bit more: ‘Come on, I hope you felt it, because we can’t do this again… We can’t shoot it again.’ But apart from those moments, I’ll let a performer tell me when they’ve delivered their best take.”
Speaking of actors, Spielberg’s latest film also draws attention for its cast. Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth are all newcomers to the director of E.T. Is this collaboration likely to pay off? The editors are fairly optimistic, but you’ll want to judge for yourself: Disclosure Day has been in theaters since June 10, 2026.
