Finally, Leo grabs the statuette

The academy award is not essentially the ultimate hallmark of Hollywood greatness; pop singer Cher has an acting Oscar while Peter Lorre, Joseph Cotton, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Gere, Samuel L Jackson, Brian Cox, Winona Ryder, Harrison Ford, Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise do not have one. And until yesterday morning Bangladesh time, nor did Leonardo DiCaprio.

At the 88th Academy Awards, he picked up that statuette for “The Revenant”, and the internet exploded.

The fact that Leonardo did not have an Oscar was one of the biggest talking points of the internet over the last two decades. His four prior acting nominations (and one as a producer for “The Wolf of Wall Street”) went without a win.

Peter O'Toole unsuccessfully chased that statuette for four decades with eight nominations, followed by Richard Burton seven, and Glenn Close six.

All the internet chatter was maybe because Leonardo's first nomination came 23 years ago, for a heart-wrenching portrayal of developmentally disabled teenager Arnie Grape; maybe his stellar rise to stardom with Titanic that made him the quintessential global heartthrob of the late 90s; or maybe because he belted out one memorable performance after another. Maybe it was a combination of all.

Leonardo's conscious pursuit for greatness began with the biographical crime drama Catch Me If You Can. Under Steven Spielberg's direction, his portrayal of millionaire teenage conman Frank Abagnale Jr showed the world what he could do. The same year, 2002, he met Martin Scorsese, the director he would go on to form one of greatest director-actor partnership, and the two joined forces for Gangs of New York. Two years later came another memorable biopic from the duo, The Aviator, of the eccentric filmmaker and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes. His second acting nomination came, first as best actor, but no win.

The momentum was building.

In 2006, his role in Blood Diamond as a diamond smuggler and as an undercover state trooper in Scorsese's The Departed saw him get double nominations as best actor in Golden Globes and Screen Actors' Guild Awards, and a third Oscar nod for Blood Diamond, but no award.

After three rather quiet years (when he worked in Body of Lies and Revolutionary Road), Leonardo's genius burst through again in 2010, with two incredible performances: Scorsese's Shutter Island and Christopher Nolan's mind-boggling Inception. The entire world was baffled that he got no big awards. Leo wasn't.

He kept pushing. In 2012, he gave another unnervingly brilliant performance in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained as the antagonist, and mixed it up with Baz Luhrmann's epic romantic drama The Great Gatsby in the titular character. The next year, Leonardo gave one of the best performances of his life as Jordan Belfort in Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. It earned him his first Oscar nod as a producer. A new category, but the same luck.

Possibly the biggest reason fans went bonkers over his snubs was because they felt he was trying everything to win that one accolade: unbelievable acting, working with the biggest directors, and the range he showed on screen. His real life felt like a script for an Oscar-worthy film.

But for 2015's The Revenant, he pulled out all the stops. With last year's triple-Oscar winner Alejandro G Iñárritu, he became 19th-century frontiersman Hugh Glass in an epic quest for survival and revenge. He dived in frozen waters, slept inside a horse carcass, ate raw bison liver, and got mauled by a bear.

On stage at the Dolby theatre in Hollywood, Leonardo's eyes gleamed but his voice remained steady. And he delivered the speech that looked straight out of an incredible biopic of a legendary actor. He spoke about climate change and the world's urgency to react to it.

“Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted,” he closed.

(More coverage of the academy awards on Arts & Entertainment page-9)