Leo DiCaprio receives his Siberian 'Oscar' made from melted jewelry
Leonardo DiCaprio got a second Oscar this week, but not from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The American actor finally received the Siberian 'Oscar' statuette created from melted down gold and silver jewelry donated by 144 Russian fans in the far northeastern city of Yakutsk.
A gracious DiCaprio posted a photo of the statuette to Instagram on Thursday, thanking the people of Yakutsk for the present.
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And, like he did in his Best Actor acceptance speech at last month's Academy Awards, the environmentally conscious Hollywood star used the moment to urge people to save the planet.
"Thank you to the people of Yakutia for this wonderful gift, especially all of the women who gathered and donated the materials that went into creating the statue," DiCaprio wrote. "As they wrote in their letter, Yakutia is home to the coldest inhabited place not only in Russia, but also on Earth -- and the region is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Rising temperatures pose a major threat to its people, their way of life and their natural habitat."
Besides his acting prowess, DiCaprio has become a major advocate for the environment, donating his time and money to support scientific research projects, and meeting with top Western officials to discuss climate change.
'Oscar for Leo!'
The idea for the Yakutsk Oscar came before DiCaprio had won the official award. It was the brainchild of a woman named Tatyana Yegorova, who told Russia's TASS news agency that she and others organized a campaign to make their favorite actor the statuette after seeing his latest film, The Revenant.
The "Oscar for Leo!" operation received an outpouring of donations from people in the Yakutsk community, especially from women, Yegorova said.
It wasn't long before news of the project spread from local Yakutsk TV channels, to Moscow and beyond.
Once the "Oscar for Leo!" campaign had enough material, local artisans got to work on the statuette.
The Yakutsk Oscar has one noticeable difference from the traditional Academy Award statuette.
In place of the sword, the Yakutsk Oscar features a Choron, a traditional three-legged goblet "symbolizing peace and expressing the people's love for the actor," according to Yegorova.
On VK.com, Russia's version of Facebook, the people of Yakutsk celebrated news that DiCaprio had received their award on Thursday. A few expressed disappointment that the actor did not snap a selfie holding it.
As well as the award, the "Oscar for Leo!" campaign extended an invitation for DiCaprio to spend summer holidays in Yakutsk. It's not known whether he has accepted the offer.
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Christopher is Mashable's Senior Correspondent covering world news, particularly the post-Soviet space and especially Ukraine, where he lived and worked for more than five years. As an editor at Ukraine's Kyiv Post newspaper, Christopher was part of the team that won the 2014 Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism for coverage of the Euromaidan Revolution, Russia's annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine. Besides Mashable, he has published with The Telegraph, The Times, The Independent and GlobalPost from such countries as Greece, Italy, Israel, Russia and Turkey, among others, as well as from aboard a search and rescue ship off the Libyan coast. Originally from rainy Portland, Oregon, he is also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Ukraine) currently based in New York.
