Leonardo DiCaprio took a moment from his One Battle After Another press tour to mourn the passing of primatologist and environmental activist Jane Goodall. DiCaprio penned a lengthy obituary on his Instagram for the woman he called his “hero.” Goodall died this week at the age of 91, according to a post from the Jane Goodall Institute. DiCaprio praised Goodall’s commitment to education and to empathy for chimpanzees and other great apes. “Jane Goodall devoted her life to protecting our planet and giving a voice to the wild animals and the ecosystems they inhabit.,” he wrote. “Her groundbreaking research on Chimpanzees in Tanzania transformed our understanding of how our closest relatives live, socialize, and think—reminding us that we are deeply connected not only to Chimpanzees and the other great apes, but to all life.”
DiCaprio has been a Goodall stan for many, many years. They were first photographed together in 2016, at the United Nations General Assembly. In 2019, he wrote an op ed in Time in celebration of the conservationist’s 85th birthday. As recently as last year, the pair were working together on a movie told from the perspective of an abandoned dog and his unlikely wolf friend. Goodall and DiCaprio maintained an unlikely friendship all their own, including a text chain apparently. “My last message to Jane was simple: ‘You are my hero,’” DiCaprio wrote on Instagram. “Now, we all must carry the torch for her in protecting our one shared home.”