In a recent interview, Jared Leto wanted to take away his reputation as a method actor, a technique that consists of physically transforming himself, not going out of character between takes and subjecting the body to extreme suffering.
The objective, shared with stars like Brando, De Niro or Di Caprio, is also to dignify their profession through sacrifice.
"I appreciate the term, but the definition is somewhat fuzzy and can be very pretentious," he said in
Variety
.
"Yes, I think my job is to present myself on set prepared, but also to make filming a pleasant and collaborative experience."
The latter should be asked to his fellow cast members.
Jared Leto was educated in a nomadic hipi commune (he lived in ten different cities during his childhood) and full of artists.
His mother was a trapeze artist and his father, after abandoning his family for another woman, committed suicide when Jared was eight.
As a child he only contemplated two professional options for his future: artist or camel.
At the age of 20, he traveled the United States from coast to coast - years later he would define it without irony as "a Homeric journey" - until he reached Hollywood.
His first roles posited him as an adolescent idol, dark but handsome: the Jordan Catalano from the series
It's my life
, the boyfriend of the protagonist of
Urban Legend
.
However, Leto quickly began to experiment with his own image.
In
Fight Club, he
played Angel Face, a boy whose beauty was so unbearable that Edward Norton wanted to punch his face apart (he did).
Director David Fincher even threw chairs at him while filming the fights and Leto broke three ribs.
In
American Psycho he
was such a
successful
yuppie
that Christian Bale wanted to kill him with an ax (he did).
But Jared Leto's first contact with the method was in
Requiem for a dream
.
To play a heroin-addicted kid, Leto spent several weeks sleeping on the street with homeless people and injecting himself with water to remain inconspicuous and "not make other drug addicts uncomfortable."
“Every night was an adventure.
Someone pricked themselves badly and ended up with an infected hand, or someone said: 'Do you remember that girl we were with the other night? Well, she's dead!'
They robbed me one night, but I was just trying to join the group, ”the actor would recall.
To subject his body to the withdrawal syndrome, the actor gave up sex for two months before filming (at that time he was engaged to Cameron Diaz, with whom he would break up in 2003 without getting married) and lost from 69 to 56 kilos through a raw vegetable diet.
Some days I only ate half a cucumber.
“I felt like that would help me understand my character.
And I think I got it, "explained Leto, who publicly apologized to his partner Jennifer Connelly because he was so into his character that he came to hate her.
The actor also confessed that he fainted several times during filming, that his liver deteriorated and that he had hallucinations.
But he also assured that this pain rewarded him with moments of ecstasy and absolute serenity.
By the end of filming Leto had developed a "weight loss addiction."
He felt so guilty every time he ate that he shaved his head and moved to a monastery in Portugal to regain his weight by eating potatoes and fish.
“It was a difficult, painful and miserable shoot.
And it was the most rewarding thing I have done in my life, "he concluded.
During the 2004 promotion of
Alexander the Great
, in which he played Hephaestion (the emperor's lover), the actor flirted with a journalist from the gay magazine
Advocate
during an interview.
He touched her nipple and said, “I know I'm gay.
I must be gay.
Because I just touched your nipple ”.
In a later statement, his publicist clarified that he is not homosexual.
In 2006, the actor spent hours every day pulling the hair from his head (hair to hair) to get a compelling image of the real murderer he played in
Lonely Hearts
.
The following year, he put on 30 kilos to play Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's killer.
This time the method consisted of drinking ice cream melted with olive oil and soy sauce.
The drastic weight gain caused him a drop that left him in a wheelchair during filming because his ankles could not support the weight of his body.
When he finished, he compensated with a seven-week diet in which he only fed on water, lemon and cayenne, losing 10 kilos in the first ten days.
But it would take a year for her body to fully recover.
"It was stupid," he would admit during an interview in
The Guardian
years later, perhaps disappointed by how unnoticed
The Murder of John Lennon went by
with critics and audiences.
“I got gout and raised my cholesterol so much in such a short time that the doctor prescribed Lipitor, a medicine for the elderly.
Mind you, it was a fascinating journey.
It was very important for the role and it changed the way I walked, spoke and others treated me ”.
Following this shoot, Leto withdrew from film for five years to focus on his musical career as the leader of the group 30 Seconds To Mars.
In a way, he also approached this role using the technique of method: he behaved like a rock star until he got it.
He composed hymns for stadiums until his band played stadiums and wrote lyrics with messianic messages until his followers revered the group.
In his early days as a musician, he was asked if he'd rather win a Grammy or an Oscar first, and he gave the answer you'd expect from a rock star: "I don't give a shit about both of you."
During desert retreats with their fans, The Echeleon (that's what Leto calls them), they wear white, meditate, connect with nature, recite proverbs in Latin and perform rituals to welcome new members (who can only enter in the group with the approval of at least two veteran members).
The prices for two days of stay range between 650 and 5,300 euros.
Meeting the members of 30 Seconds To Mars after a concert costs up to 700 euros (for perspective: Rihanna charges 100 euros and Taylor Swift does it for free).
Leto defines his fans as "believers."
From the stage of their concerts, the band projects images of Mandela, Luther King or Gandhi with lyrics such as: “I believe in light, raise your hands to the sky.
The fight is over, the war has been won, raise your hands towards the sun ”.
In 2014, the group entered the
Guinness Book
with the longest tour in rock history.
But this is not Leto's main source of income: he has shares in more than 60 technology companies, including Uber, Snapchat, Spotify, AirBnB or Reddit.
In 2013 she returned to the movies with the
Dallas Buyers Club
, where she played Rayon, a transgender woman with AIDS and a drug addict.
When director Jean-Marc Vallé met with Leto, he already appeared as the character and tried to seduce him.
The actor lost weight to 50 kilos, waxed his entire body (including his eyebrows) and tried to live as a woman for several months.
He defined it as a "physical commitment" to the character.
“When I went to the supermarket I would only look at the food and people would react with rejection, judgment and cruelty.
They didn't know who he was or what he was, but they knew they didn't like what they saw.
That helped me become Rayon, ”he explained.
His partner Matthew McConaughey joined the technique and, immersed in his homophobic cowboy character, he shouted phrases such as: "When I see your ass I don't know whether to kick him or fuck him."
At the film's premiere, the director, producer and other actors assured that that night they had met Jared Leto for the first time.
The entire team praised the actor's commitment to his character and Hollywood crowned him with an Oscar.
Leto defined the
awards campaign
in the US edition of
GQ
as "a wonderful roller coaster."
In 2014 it was announced that Jared Leto's next project would be to play the Joker in
The Suicide Squad
.
And he bought himself a house worthy of a supervillain's lair: an abandoned US Army air base, 9,200 square meters and 1.2 meters thick walls, where atomic tests were carried out and, according to some conspiracy theories, was filmed Neil Armstrong's moon landing.
The space has 50 rooms and includes a gym, a swimming pool, a control tower, a series of basements that reach several meters underground, a movie theater, a nuclear shelter and a guillotine.
Once an intruder came in and it took Leto a day to find out.
The actor has covered the walls of the mansion with works of art (especially by Banksy) and the tables with books by Plato, Stephen King or Guinness where his record with 30 Seconds To Mars appears.
With this residency, Jared Leto consummated the immersion in his definitive role: that of extravagant artist.
Her aphorisms, however, often sound more like those of a Miss Universe contestant.
Here are a few examples ... "The person I most admire is Stephen Hawking, a great example of triumph in the face of adversity";
"My superpower would be to eliminate greed from the world";
"My worst habit is the relentless pursuit of perfection";
"My favorite book is
The Catcher in the Rye";
"My guilty pleasure is art."
When it came to taking on the Joker, an iconic character who led Heath Ledger into the abyss of madness, Leto braced himself by watching videos of actual violence until he felt comfortable with her.
But when filming began, his transformative process was limited to playing jokes more typical of a teenager than an anarchist: instead of going to rehearsals, he sent a messenger to throw a dead pig on the script reading table and He sent his companions boxes of bullets and anal dildos (to Will Smith), a porn magazine with the sticky pages (to Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and a box with a live rat inside (to Margot Robbie).
And the rest of the cast, apparently used condoms.
“I did all that to create a dynamic, an element of surprise and spontaneity.
The Joker does not respect personal space or barriers ”, clarified Leto.
Director David Ayer, who encouraged his actors to punch each other during rehearsals, celebrated Jared's delivery to the role.
Actor Jay Courteney called his dedication "incredibly generous" to the other performers.
Viola Davis, however, said that when she finally met the real Jared Leto (after filming was over, of course) she was carrying pepper spray in her bag.
Of course, when he played a blind person in
Blade Runner 2049,
Leto spent several weeks wearing opaque lenses.
“I had heard stories of how Jared transforms into his characters,”
director Denis Villeneuve
told
The
Wall Street Journal
.
“But I wasn't prepared to see him walk in without seeing anything.
He walked slowly, helped by an assistant.
It was like seeing Jesus Christ entering a temple.
It was a sacred moment.
I was moved to tears.
And it was just a camera test! "
“I should never talk about [the method], because I don't do it to talk about it.
I do it for myself ”, the actor has justified himself.
“I work as I please.
If someone doesn't like it, they can kiss my butt. "
Leto also joked that maybe he used the method because he really wasn't talented enough.
What was not so funny, according to the specialized publication in cinema
The Hollywood Reporter
, was learning about the
Joker
project
with Joaquín Phoenix.
He tried to block the film, and when his representatives failed to stop the project, he fired them.
Although it has been confirmed that he will play the Joker in the remake of
Justice League,
Leto will not appear in the sequel to
The Suicide Squad
.
Not least because its director, James Gunn, hinted on Twitter that Leto has a sexual predilection for girls under the age of 18.
In August Jared Leto confirmed that his next role will be that of Andy Warhol.
And he did so through a description in which he could well be talking about himself: “His greatest work of art was himself.
He became who he dreamed of being.
It was a self-created enigma ”.
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