Leonardo DiCaprio Meme
The Leonardo DiCaprio meme is a still from The Great Gatsby of the title character turning to camera and raising a glass in a toast, used to salute something. Captions either praise a thing sincerely or toast something faintly absurd with a straight face.
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Where the Leonardo DiCaprio meme comes from
This one has an unusually clean paper trail, because the image entered the internet before the film it comes from was even in cinemas.
Warner Bros released the second theatrical trailer for The Great Gatsby on 20 December 2012. Roughly forty seconds in sits the shot: the character turns, lifts a glass toward the lens, fireworks break behind him and the orchestration swells. In the finished film it is the reveal, the moment the audience finally sees the man everyone at the party has been talking about. Baz Luhrmann built the whole sequence as a punchline to twenty minutes of anticipation, which is exactly why the frame works as a reaction image: it is a shot engineered to mean here he is, and now we drink.
The film opened in the United States on 10 May 2013. Within days the toast was circulating on Tumblr as a reaction image and animated loop, initially attached to the soundtrack single A Little Party Never Killed Nobody. A widely cited Tumblr post from 13 May 2013 collected a set of these loops, and from there the shot moved into general reaction use. Later in 2013 the still landed on meme generator sites with editable text boxes, which is the moment it stopped being a GIF you reblogged and became a template you could write on.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 20 December 2012 | Second theatrical trailer released. The toast shot is visible in it, the earliest online appearance of the frame. |
| 10 May 2013 | The Great Gatsby opens in United States cinemas. |
| 13 May 2013 | A Tumblr post collecting animated versions of the toast is widely credited with kicking off its use as a reaction image. |
| Mid 2013 | Listicles and roundups pick it up as one of the standout images of the year. |
| Later 2013 | The still is uploaded to meme generator sites as a captionable template with two text boxes. |
| 2013 to now | Sustained use as a general purpose approval image, largely detached from the film. |
That last row is the interesting part. The image has substantially outlived recognition of its source, and it is common to find people who use the toast fluently without knowing which film it comes from.
What it means and when to use it
A raised glass is one of the few gestures that survives without any cultural translation, which is why this template needs so little scaffolding. The default reading is approval. The interesting uses bend that in one direction: the toast stays warm and the thing being toasted gets worse.
| Use | Correct | Wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Sincere congratulation | Someone genuinely achieved something and you are marking it. | Adding a sarcastic second line that undercuts the person you meant to praise. |
| Ironic toast | Raising a glass to a mediocre or absurd achievement in exactly the same warm tone. | Signalling the irony in the text. The tone must stay sincere for it to work. |
| Agreement in a thread | Used bare, no caption, as a reply meaning well said. | Stacking three paragraphs on top of a reaction image that already says everything. |
| Self directed | Toasting your own small and unimpressive win. | Toasting your own genuine success without a joke, which lands as a straight brag. |
| Attributing words to the actor | Not applicable. Caption the character. | Writing text that reads as a quote from a living, named performer. |
Captions that work
Two boxes. Top line names what you are raising a glass to, bottom line supplies the reason and carries the punchline. Keep the top line sincere, because the tension between a warm toast and a stupid subject is the entire mechanism.
- workHere is to the people who reply all May your calendar be nothing but recurring invites
- successTo everyone who said it could not be done You were right, and I did it badly anyway
- codingA toast to whoever wrote the error message that just says error Truly a craftsman
- friendsTo the friend who fronted the group trip And to the six months of reminders it will take to get paid back
- relatableHere is to closing forty seven tabs in one click A cleaner slate than any January has ever given me
- workTo the meeting that could have been an email And to the email that will now follow it
- procrastinationRaising a glass to my future self Who will absolutely deal with all of this
- friendsTo everyone still posting in the group chat from 2016 We are the last civilisation
- foodHere is to the last slice nobody claimed I claimed it in my heart an hour ago
- techTo the person who fixed it by turning it off and on again Science bows to you
- internetA toast to everybody who read the whole terms of service Liar
- socialHere is to leaving the party at a reasonable hour Which I have quietly redefined as nine in the evening
Variants and close relatives
| Format | How it differs |
|---|---|
| Leonardo DiCaprio Pointing | A different film entirely, from Django Unchained in 2012. Means recognising a reference, not approving of one. The two are constantly confused. |
| Laughing DiCaprio | Also from Django Unchained. Used for mockery rather than salute, so the tone is the opposite. |
| The animated toast | The same moment as a looping clip. Reads warmer and slower than the still, and works better as a bare reply than as a captioned macro. |
| Salute and respect formats | Various stills of characters saluting. Same function, no glass, so they lack the celebratory framing. |
| Clapping and standing ovation reactions | Sincere applause with no room for the deadpan double meaning this template supports. |
| Party crowd stills from the same film | Occasionally used as backdrops for party or excess jokes. Different frame, no toast, much weaker recognition. |
Common mistakes
- Mixing it up with the pointing image. Pointing means I recognise that reference. The toast means I approve of that. Swapping them makes a caption read as a non sequitur.
- Marking the sarcasm. Adding a wink, an lol or a trailing ellipsis kills the format. The gag depends on the toast being delivered completely straight.
- Putting the reason in the top box. The template is a toast, so it needs the here is to opening first. Reversed, it stops sounding like a toast at all.
- Treating it as a quote card. Text laid over a real performer reads to some viewers as words he said. Write the toast as the character, and never as a statement of the actor’s opinion.
- Covering the glass. The raised glass is the only load bearing object in the frame. Text over it removes the meaning and leaves you with a man in a tuxedo.
- Using it for genuinely bad news. A warm toast over a real tragedy reads as celebration of it, not as dark humour.
Limits and etiquette
The main limit is that this is a photograph of a living, identifiable actor in character. Everything you write on it should be attributable to Jay Gatsby at a party in 1922, not to the man playing him. Captions implying a real performer endorses a product, holds a political position or said a particular thing move from joke to misattribution, and commercial use of a film still carries separate rights problems that a joke does not.
Second, on freshness: the image is thirteen years old and it is showing. It is not obscure, but it is no longer a signal that you are online a lot. Use it because a toast is legible to everyone, not because it will read as current.
Third, the tone is narrow. This template only ever means approval, real or performed. It cannot carry sarcasm about the person you are toasting, disagreement, or complaint, and attempts to stretch it that way simply confuse people.
The frame is a third-party film still, hosted here so you can caption it. Rights holders can use the takedown process at /dmca/.
Frequently asked questions
What film is the toasting meme from?
It is a still of Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby, the Baz Luhrmann adaptation released in the United States on 10 May 2013.
When did the image first appear online?
The shot appears in the second theatrical trailer for the film, released on 20 December 2012, almost five months before the film opened.
What is happening in the scene?
It is the moment the title character is finally revealed at his own party. He turns to camera and raises a glass while fireworks go off behind him.
How did the still become a meme?
Tumblr users began posting the toast as a reaction image and animated set within days of the May 2013 release, and meme generator sites added the still later that year.
What does the meme mean?
It signals approval. You use it to raise a glass to something, either sincerely or with a completely straight face while the thing being toasted is ridiculous.
How many text boxes does the template have?
Two. The top line names what you are raising a glass to and the bottom line delivers the reason, which is usually where the joke sits.
Is it acceptable to caption a photo of a real actor?
Caption the character and the moment rather than the man. Avoid any wording that reads as something the actor personally said, believes or endorses.
Is the toast format still used?
Yes. It is one of the few 2013 reaction images still in circulation, mostly because a raised glass reads instantly with no context at all.