Poor Leo. Not only did Leonardo DiCaprio fail to win an Oscar on Sunday, he is now also being sued.

“Out of the Furnace,” the 2013 thriller which the 39-year-old actor co-produced, is based on the Ramapo Mountain people of New Jersey. It boasts a cast of A-listers, including Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard, and Willem Dafoe.

And while the film’s impressive cast line-up is enough to make people watch the film, a group of people thought it shouldn’t have been shown.

It apparently brought “emotional distress” to eight members of the Ramapo Mountain community after they were unfairly portrayed as drug-using “inbreds” in the film.

According to legal papers obtained by RadarOnline.com, the plaintiffs filed a defamation lawsuit in New Jersey in January against DiCaprio and his co-producers for insulting the Ramapo Mountain people in the film.

“Out of the Furnace” is said to characterise them in an extremely negative manner, calling them “inbred mountain folk from Jersey.”

The movie also makes negative statements about the Ramapo Mountain People, such as “You f*** with these inbreds, you’ll come crawling back if you’re lucky.”

Harrelson’s character in the film, a sociopathic drug dealer named Harlan DeGroat, “characterised as the most awful human walking.”

DeGroat is a well-known common surname among the people from the Ramapo Mountains.

The lawsuit reads: “The movie and article in the New York Post places Plaintiffs and their family members in a false light. Each have (sic) had an extremely negative effect on Plaintiff’s community. It is extremely embarrassing to the Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs and their family members are harassed and discriminated against. The children are teased at school.”

How they are portrayed in the film has allegedly inflicted “emotional and psychological damages” to the plaintiffs.

They are seeking damages in an amount to be determined by a jury.

DiCaprio has just lost an Academy Award to Matthew McConaughey on Sunday. He was up for Best Actor for his role in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but missed out on the gong.