Leonardo DiCaprio was a poor kid from Los Angeles who lived on the rough streets before he rose to become one of the most well-known actors in Hollywood.

The Wolf of Wall Street actor said that there was a “major prostitution ring on my street corner, crime and violence everywhere” during his formative years in a run-down Hollywood neighborhood. The actor grew up there till he was nine years old.

‘It really was like Taxi Driver in a lot of ways…”

‘I grew up very poor and I got to see the other side of the spectrum,’ DiCaprio said.

He further said that heroin and crack cocaine addiction were common in an alleyway close to his childhood home.

The actor argues that his early exposure to addiction kept him away from drugs his whole life.

‘Never done [drugs],’ the actor told the Los Angeles Times.

‘That’s because I saw this stuff literally every day when I was three or four years old.’

‘So Hollywood was a walk in the park for me… I’d go to parties and it was there, and yeah, there’s that temptation.’

DiCaprio, though, credits acting for getting him started along the right road.

The charming celebrity claims he urged his mother to enroll him in acting training after experiencing bullying at public school.

‘That was the motivational thing that happened to me in my life,’ he said. ‘I was 15, and I said to my mom, “I want to be an actor. Please take me to auditions.” Because I had to get out of the public school system.’

Elsewhere, the Oscar nominee was able to avoid being seen while eating pizza with his famous friends Bradley Cooper and Lenny Kravitz.

On Saturday, the famous three made a pit stop at Joe’s Pizza in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Kravitz posted a photo on Twitter documenting the visit.

The 49-year-old American Woman singer tweeted to his 4.9 million followers, “At Joe’s Pizza NYC with Leo and Coop.”

DiCaprio recently appeared in The Wolf Of Wall Street, for which he has received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.