Nobody is immune to being starstruck with their celebrity crushes, not even Hollywood stars themselves. Oscar nominee America Ferrera shared her story about how she started weeping after meeting superstar Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time on The Late Night with Seth Meyers show.
What did Ferrera say about meeting DiCaprio for the first time?
Ferrera talked about how being starstruck tends to sneak up on you during industry events. For her, it happens when she meets someone she has a “childhood connection” to. She met Leonardo DiCaprio back in 2007 during the Screen Actors Guild Awards, where she won an award for her performance in the hit show Ugly Betty.
She talked about how she felt like she belonged in the industry after winning the SAG award, saying it was “cool.” The actress also shared that she has been a huge fan of DiCaprio since her early teens and watched Titanic seven times in the theater. Ferrera said that she said hello to DiCaprio during the awards and “promptly departed” from him. Then she “went around the corner and just started weeping.”
“And my husband, then-boyfriend, was with me and he was like, ‘I am so embarrassed right now,’ “ she said about Ryan Piers Williams, with whom Ferrera tied the knot in 2011. The actress also joked about how she hopes DiCaprio never sees this, saying that he “probably won’t.”
Ferrera continues to be starstruck to this day
The incident with DiCaprio was not a one-off incident for the actress as she was also recently starstruck by Tom Hanks. Ferrera, who has gotten a lot of praise and an Academy Award nomination for her excellent performance in Barbie, opened up about the kind words from the veteran actor to Dave Karger during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival‘s Virtuosos Awards.
“I’m not ready to talk about what he said, but I guess whenever anyone asks me, who were the actors you grew up wanting to be? I’d say Tom Hanks,” Ferrera talked about how it was her dream to be like Tom Hanks more than any actor as “we all see ourselves in him.”
She recalled, “He came up to me at an event and he said very nice things to me and I’m still recovering from it, and that was truly the moment where I felt like … ‘Okay, I’m happy, I can tap out now. Tom Hanks just said nice things to me.” The actress shared her happiness without going into too much detail about what he said. But it was clear that this positive interaction with her favorite star had left her in very high spirits.
