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WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - Leonardo DiCaprio didn't realize he was in over his head until it was too late.

"I was constantly fueled with adrenaline," DiCaprio says of filming Body of Lies. "There were certainly moments of sheer anxiety."

He wasn't talking about the physical hardships he endured for director Ridley Scott's homage to such '70s political potboilers as The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor - although the 33-year-old Los Angeles native did endure plenty.

Lots of physicality

DiCaprio's character, undercover CIA operative Roger Ferris, is treated like a human piņata. He narrowly outruns terrorist bombs, gets torn up by shrapnel in a helicopter missile strike and is attacked by a rabid dog while on a covert mission to take down a Middle Eastern terrorist cell. In addition, Ferris must navigate the treacherous shoals of his own government's convoluted agenda in the region, his progress undercut at every step by a ruthless agency station chief played by Russell Crowe.

Worse, in actuality, DiCaprio was stricken by a respiratory illness after filming a harrowing, emotionally exhausting torture sequence in an ancient Moroccan prison.

"If you're going to put something like that on film, we all had an understanding that it had to be as realistic and frightening as it could possibly be," DiCaprio said of the torture scene, while seated across from Scott at the director's production company.

Based on Washington Post political columnist David Ignatius' novel of the same name, Body of Lies makes the harshest appraisal of American foreign policy of any big-budget studio film produced during the second Bush administration. The movie posits that our country has lost its direction in the Middle East, portraying frontline operatives as working without strategy or the necessary willingness to cooperate with foreign governments to achieve peace.

"We're waging war in a place we don't entirely understand," said DiCaprio, who consulted with a former head of the CIA to prepare for the role.

But what really put the actor outside his comfort zone on Body of Lies was the unique professional mojo between Scott and Crowe - a hard-charging duo that take a perverse pride in skipping the conventional rehearsal process and who would excise huge chunks of the script just moments before the cameras rolled. For DiCaprio, thrice Oscar-nominated and something of a muse to Martin Scorsese (after starring in the director's Gangs of New York and The Departed as well as the upcoming Shutter Island), it wasn't easy being the odd man out. And those kinds of challenges to his normal process triggered a fight-or-flight response.

Easy relationship

"You hear it a lot in this business, that there's a shorthand between an actor and a director," DiCaprio said. "But Russell and Ridley were really accustomed to working together. It took me a few weeks to get used to that work process and into that pacing. It's just a few words then, 'Boom! Boom! Boom! Let's take that whole sequence out. You got it? All right. You agree? Great. We're going to shoot it in 10 minutes.' "

Body of Lies is Scott and Crowe's fourth movie together. It's a road-tested relationship responsible for the best picture Oscar-winning Gladiator (2000) and the 2007 box-office smash American Gangster (as well as 2006's romantic comedy A Good Year). Scott justified his methodology by pointing out that a table reading usually is enough to give the actors their "motivation." And that the shoot-now-ask-questions-later modus operandi that he and Crowe have perfected allows interactions to be "a more visceral thing" in his view.

"His favorite thing to say is, 'Let's shoot it,' " DiCaprio said of Scott. "He's unlike any other filmmaker I've worked with in that regard. It seems like chaos, but he makes it look so easy."

Star praised

Scott seemed impatient with all the hullabaloo over his style but also proud. And he was quick to return the compliment.

"It's easy when you have people thinking on their feet," Scott said. "He's quick on his feet because he's been working since he was 9."

"Thirteen," said DiCaprio, smirking.

"Well, you looked 9," Scott said. "He's very experienced. This guy is comfortable at the dance."