America Ferrera recalls how she cried after meeting Leonardo DiCaprio

Washington DC [US]: Oscar-nominated actor America Ferrera still gets star-struck by some actors. During her appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, the ‘Barbie’ star revealed that she has been meeting people this awards season whom she can’t help but admire, like Martin Scorsese and Tom Hanks, whom she acknowledged she aspired to be as a child, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Ferrera also recalled meeting Leonardo DiCaprio in 2007, noting to the late-night host that being star-struck sometimes sneaks up on her.

“More often than not, it’s someone you had a childhood connection to,” she said of being surprised when she meets someone. “So it’s always very embarrassing. … I watched ‘Titanic’ in the movie theatres seven times. 13, 14 [years old], prime time to be in love with Leonardo DiCaprio, right?”

She explained that when she first went to the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2007 for Ugly Betty, which made her feel like she belonged, she wasn’t expecting to be turned off by someone, but then the Titanic star himself arrived.

“I said hello to him, and I promptly departed him and went around the corner and just started weeping,” Ferrera told Meyers. “My husband, then-boyfriend, was with me, and he was like, ‘I am so embarrassed right now. This is so… like, stop crying.’ And I was like, ‘But it’s Leonardo.'”

Earlier in the late-night visit, Ferrera discussed working with her husband, Ryan Piers Williams, on Barbie. He portrayed her on-screen husband.

The Dumb Money actress explained that his casting came about after she told writer-director Greta Gerwig that her favourite part of the script was where it said something like “white husband at home learning Spanish” because her husband was in the room next door doing the same thing.

“And [Gerwig was] like, ‘Oh, my God, does he want to play your husband?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know,'” Ferrera said. Then months and months later, she meant it. And then there he is, reported The Hollywood Reporter.