America Ferrera Says She ‘Started Weeping’ After Meeting Leonardo DiCaprio, Husband Was ‘So Embarrassed’

The ‘Barbie’ actress’ first run-in with DiCaprio was at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2007

America Ferrera; Leonardo DiCaprio

America Ferrera may be an Oscar-nominated actress, but she couldn’t hold back her tears the first time she met Leonardo DiCaprio.

Appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Friday, the 39-year-old Barbie star explained that being starstruck will “sneak up on you” at industry events, before she detailed one celebrity encounter in particular that left her “weeping.”

As she explained, it usually happens when she meets someone she had a “childhood connection” to, such as when she met DiCaprio, now 49, at the 2007 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where she won an award for her performance in Ugly Betty.

“I watched Titanic in the movie theaters seven times. [I was] 13, 14 [years old], prime time to be in love with Leonardo DiCaprio, right? OK, so first time I went to the SAG Awards, and I had won for Ugly Betty, I had been onstage and the whole thing,” she recalled. “I was feeling kind of like, ‘I belong here, this is cool.’ ”

At the awards show, she ended up saying “hello” to DiCaprio. “And I promptly departed [from] him, went around the corner and just started weeping,” Ferrera said.

“And my husband, then-boyfriend, was with me and he was like, ‘I am so embarrassed right now.’ ”

Ferrera’s spouse, Ryan Piers Williams, whom she wed in 2011, then encouraged Ferrera to “stop crying.”

“I hope Leonardo DiCaprio never sees this,” Ferrera told Meyers, who joked that he “probably won’t.”

Leonardo DiCaprio

Ferrera recently opened up about being starstruck by the some of the praise she’s gotten from other movie stars for her latest role. Earlier this month, she appeared at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Virtuosos Awards, where she told correspondent Dave Karger onstage that she was still enthused about kind words from Tom Hanks.

“I don’t know that I’m ready to talk about it. 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 told Karger. “I wanted to be Tom Hanks more than any other actor. I did. He’s every man. He’s like, we all see ourselves in him, right?”

After emphasizing that she was “not going to cry” onstage, the Superstore alum detailed her interaction with the 67-year-old actor without sharing too many details.

“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,’ ” she recalled. “Tom Hanks just said nice things to me.”

Ferrera is up for the Academy Award in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role in the 2023 blockbuster Barbie. Nine other actors this year also earned their first-ever nominations for the March 10 awards show, which takes place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.