LONDON:

Leonardo DiCaprio, who just turned 34, says the election of Barack Obama to the post of US

president is the best birthday gift he could have possibly got. Thesun.co.uk quoted him as saying, “People keep asking me what I want for a present so I tell them I have the best birthday gift I can possibly get, and that’s this new president. I’m so excited.”

The actor celebrated his 34th birthday on November 11. He was in London to promote his new movie, Body of Lies, in which he plays a CIA agent hunting a terrorist in Iraq and Jordan.

Fiercely anti-war, DiCaprio hopes that the new president will prove to be good news for Iraq and Afghanistan. “Barack Obama’s foreign policy positions are very different from the last administration. I think we are going to see some profound changes in the United States and it’s going to reverberate throughout the rest of the world. The good thing now is that a whole new generation of young people have spoken and have voted for change and new policies, and all we can do now is support the new president and give him the tools that he needs,” he said. — HNS