Leonardo DiCaprio, Badass has arrived, in the form of his first one-on-one interview about The Revenant. His feral press tour kicked off this week with Yahoo! - that’s where Leo explains why he grew that thing on his face for months and the many, many challenges he’s willing to take on for his craft and — for those reading between the lines — what could become his first Oscar win.

“I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do,” said Leo. “Whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. [I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly.”

He ate raw bison liver too – click here for a refresher. Don’t forget it. Leo’s playing aggressively, right out of the gate.

But before you think Leo’s sacrifices are more daunting or difficult than smashing glass into his hand in Django Unchained, Jordan Belfort’s lemon trip or anything he did in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, well, this:

If you look at the LA Times’ Gold Derby website, Leo is still considered one of the top contenders for the Best Actor Oscar trophy for The Revenant, sight unseen. At the end of the summer, the movie was not even finished, and like Lainey wrote yesterday, it continues to go way over budget. Click here for a refresher. Yet, this bro-friendly, untamed and savage side of Leo is catnip for Hollywood’s alpha male aspirations, and an interview like this, with these gory details, is just the bait they need to flock to the theatres. Remember, Titanic went way over budget too, but that targeted a very different Leo demographic.

So, if we accept that a nomination for Leo is a given, even though a few in the business have been referring to The Revenant as “Alejandro’s Gate” (a reference to Heaven’s Gate, or “Kevin [Costner]’s Gate” [Waterworld] – a director’s passion project-turned-bloated mess-turned-box-office-bomb)… and we now know he likes the taste of raw bison liver… how will he stack up against his fellow contenders?

Here are my current Best Actor power rankings, from what I’ve seen this year:

1) Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
2) Paul Dano, Love and Mercy (if not in supporting)
3) Tom Hanks, Bridge of Spies 
4) Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl 
5) Johnny Depp, Black Mass
6) Matt Damon, The Martian
7) Jake Gyllenhaal, Southpaw
8) Robert Redford, Truth

And that doesn’t even include Will Smith in Concussion, who I truly believe is the underdog contender of the year, as I’ve written about here.

Yahoo! is a great start for Leo to break into this pack, but he still needs to turn up the heat, and, maybe, turn down the in-your-face thirst? This all reminds me of his The Departed co-star Mark Wahlberg’s pseudo awards campaign for The Gambler; a great movie, but not all-that… even though Marky Mark lost 60 pounds.

Click here to read Leo’s full interview with Yahoo! Movies.