First official images of Leonardo DiCaprio as J Edgar Hoover

There have been some pap shots bouncing around the interweb for a while now, but now we've got a first official look at Leonardo DiCaprio as J Edgar Hoover, courtesy of EW.com.

DiCaprio is playing the infamous FBI founder in Clint Eastwood's biopic J. Edgar , which is already shaping up to be one of the key award hopefuls in the coming season.

The film will track Hoover over many years, as he builds the FBI before slowly succumbing to paranoia and abusing his power.

J. Edgar will also play with the suggestion of the alleged love affair between Hoover and his associate director Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). Naomi Watts is playing Hoover's secretary Helen Gandy.

With Eastwood at the helm, and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black on scripting duties, this one is practically screaming Oscar. Will this finally be the time DiCaprio takes home a statuette?

You can see DiCaprio brooding as the solitary lawman in the shot above, and there are further images that see him taking direction from Eastwood, and sitting alongside Hammer's Tolson, right here:



J. Edgar is set to open on 9 November 2011 in the US, with a UK release expected early in 2012.

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.