Woolwich man is Leonardo DiCaprio's body double in Oscar-nominated film The Revenant

Chris Hickson, 31, was picked from hundreds of models to work alongside the Hollywood superstar in the hot new movie.

The pair even shared a trailer, at times, during the making of the film, which has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards, with Mr Hickson describing DiCaprio as a “wonderful man”.

Chris Hickson on The Revenant set

The Titanic heartthrob plays a frontiersman who is left for dead by his own hunting party after being mauled by a bear.

Originally asked to try on prosthetics so director Alejandro Inarritu could see how they looked on a human, the south Londoner impressed so much that he was made DiCaprio’s official body double.

Mr Hickson, born in Woolwich but grew up in Welling, was then called to film with The Revenant crew in Canada.

Read our review of The Revenant here

He told News Shopper: “My agency Pinewood got in touch and told me they were casting for The Revenant.

“My initial role was to be the model to show Alejandro and everyone how the bear mauling scene would look with the prosthetics. The makeup artist Sian Grigg was so creative and fantastic.

Mr Hickson standing next to a poster of The Revenant 

“Alejandro and Leo were happy with the work and they required a body double for the shoot because the movie was the way it was - it was a privilege.

“So around September 2014, we went out to Canada and we shot the whole thing over the course of nine months.

“I would be called whenever the director wanted me to sit somewhere, lie somewhere or do whatever he wanted from me.

“I’ll be seen on camera in the film, wide shots, and walking away. Generally anything without Leo’s face because I’m not his twin brother by any means. It was just a fantastic experience.”

Leonardo DiCaprio

It was not the first time the part-time model and day-to-day commodities investment man had worked on a movie set.

He was in The Wolf of Wall Street, again, as a body double for DiCaprio – but never saw him.

For most of his life, Mr Hickson has been compared to the Oscar-nominated actor by family and friends and recalled the first time he met him.

The DiCaprio lookalike said: “We were filming in Vancouver and I was probably lying down for about an hour while they took the shots and I looked up and thought ‘that guy looks like Leo.’

“He held out his hand to me and helped me up and said ‘good to meet you, Chris.’

Mr Hickson

“We spent many hours in the trailer bus when the weather was brutal and it made me think that I could not be working with anyone as wonderful as this man.

“I was always told ‘you look a bit like Leo’ - I constantly get that throughout my life.

“The reality is that it was almost destiny because people saw the resemblance from a young age and working with an Oscar-winning director and Oscar-nominated actor in Leo, it actually happened.”

Leonardo DiCaprio signing autographs at The Revenant London premiere 

The film, also starring British actor Tom Hardy, is set in 1823, and has already won three Golden Globes Awards.