Oh, wow, that’s just fab, Mr. DiCaprio!

As someone who has done a more than a few interviews in his career, I realized long ago that celebrity interviews aren’t about getting to any kind of truth. They’re more about getting something, anything, around which you can build an article (column, profile, whatever).

That’s particularly difficult to do when you’re in one of those group-interview settings called junkets. I went on two of those: One in 1989 for Steven Spielberg’s minor effort “Always,” and then again for the 1993 Johnny Depp vehicle “Benny and Joon.”

You sit in a semicircle with reporters from, say, the L.A. Daily News, the Calgary (Alberta) Herald and some college DJ from Bakersfield Junior College, and lob softball questions at the likes of Depp, Spielberg, Holly Hunter, Richard Dreyfuss or Mary Stuart Masterson.

Even in such a setting, though, it’s possible to be professional. Which is NOT how I would describe the interview that this filmazing.com reporter did with Leonardo DeCaprio or Russell Crowe in support of their film “Body of Lies” (directed by Ridley Scott, it opens today).

Remember the three great lead-ins to any question you might want to ask: “Great,” “That’s fabulous” and “That’s fantastic.” You can’t go wrong.

Below: Mary Stuart Masterson was one of the joys of the filmed-in-Spokane movie “Benny and Joon.”

Associated Press photo