Leonardo DiCaprio has approached his career like a marathon, not a sprint.

The award-winning actor has enjoyed huge success in Hollywood, starring in movies such as Catch Me If You Can, The Departed and The Wolf of Wall Street - but DiCaprio has encouraged up-and-coming stars to take a long-term approach to their careers.

Speaking to Deadline, the 51-year-old actor explained: "The thing that I could say more than anything is that if you love this profession, if you love being an actor, you have to realise that it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. And that's not to say, 'Oh, these are all pivotal choices. Don't try something commercial. Don't do this too early.'

"It's about the idea of looking at your career 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, and putting those building blocks together to last. And maybe overexposure could be damaging.

"I think, if anything, I had somewhat of an instinct early on about overexposure. Granted, it was a different time. It was a time where I watched actors that kind of disappeared their personal life, and you didn't know much about them. It's much different now with social media. But I didn't get to know much about them except what I saw on screen."

DiCaprio admits that he was "very lucky, very early on" in his career. However, the actor appeared in "a lot of independent movies" before making his big breakthrough.

He said: "I got to see them build a body of great work over time, I wasn't inundated with a massive explosion of too many films by them in one or two years. That isn't to say you shouldn't take the work when it's given to you, but it's the idea of doling it out, or maybe just taking those films that have great supporting characters that are interesting and making your mark in the industry.

"I was very fortunate and very lucky, very early on. And like I said with Titanic, that was the real changing point, when I got to choose my own films. But until then, I did a lot of independent movies. I just went for the character that I thought was most interesting, and something that I could sink my teeth into."