Jared Leto Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

you know there are two movies now i have the answers and nobody else does denis told me i'm blade runner because i look inside of harrison ford's mind i'm the only person that knows if he's the replicant or not so he said that i can decide so i have that secret now and now with this movie i have the secret to carry as well [Music] the thin red line wow it brings back memories uh just hearing that name i think about terence malik um who is you know a genius and you know he's a guy who made two movies and disappeared for 20 years which you just gotta respect you know you gotta respect anybody that just like yeah i'm gonna go off and and you know pursue some other interests and kind of just live life i mean i took about six years off but i think 20 is like that's that's real i can't say i took six years off i was i was doing other things i was on tour mostly but but terence malik is you know he's made two of my favorite films um uh well many more than two but two of the the seminal films that he made one is called badlands the other one's called days of heaven both like you know must-watch films for cinephiles and actors and actually i remember the audition for that and uh it was maybe the worst audition i ever had they i walked in the casting office and they had like a desk turned on its side and we were supposed to kind of like shoot you know imaginary bullets at each other and pretend to be in a war which i guess makes sense if you're auditioning for a war movie but i just couldn't do it i don't know i just couldn't get with the program and i stood up in the middle of the audition and you know got sprayed by a thousand imaginary bullets and i just stopped and i said i i just can't i didn't i just felt too embarrassed i was probably just too naive as an actor to pull that off in that room you know maybe i just wasn't you know good enough or something but but i stopped in the middle of the audition which is unheard of and i and i actually just i i tapped out i said i can't do this i i'm not your guy and uh for some reason or another terence malik called me up and i think we had met actually before that just caught him on a general meeting and he wanted me to play this part in the movie we're going to tackle breasts through platoon and reserve we gotta cross those three folds of ground you see once we get beyond that we gotta attack that hill and the part that he wanted me to play was to be the first person to die and he said well if i cast you and you die really early on then everyone watching the movie is gonna know that no one's safe uh so that that was i don't know if he was just kind of you know being nice but that was you know the role was important for him when i was on set there were these little like uh leaves that if you touch them these plants they they would close up and i i can't remember it was me or another character i was right there we were we were right near the camera as i can't remember it was my character someone else was dying i just remember he saw one of those leaves near the frame and he was like you know just reach out now touch the leave and it closed as the character was dying and then he went and shot extreme like macro close-ups of the plant or something i don't know if it's in the final film but um i just remember you know how aware he was of his surroundings of nature [Music] fight club i remember when there was this rumor going around that they were making this really controversial book into a movie and david fincher was directing and there was a time there like i didn't realize it was just a year after thin red line but there was a time there where there was there were really special films like kind of really edgy films that were challenging these you know a tour type directors that were just doing some incredible work so it was one that i really wanted to be a part of and i i i lobbied to be a part of and i remember bleaching my hair and my eyebrows white we did one pass and i think it was brad pitt was like um said something about billy idol you know he was like blonder you know so we went we went even wider with it i really enjoyed being on that set because i got to watch uh brad who's incredibly loose and and naturalistic you know always does something a little different take to take and that was interesting to see and everybody on it just kind of felt like we were you know kind of getting into trouble and doing you know something that was potentially special but you know on the darker side of the universe yeah working with venture was just a dream did you train a lot in fighting and prepare your body no i don't think we rehearsed very much at all from from my memory and it was supposed to be like you're fighting like you would you would fight not like a professional fighter i should say like the character would fight [Applause] the only thing that wasn't real is we weren't actually hitting each other but you did get hit at times you know it was it wasn't like it was perfectly choreographed you know it was all it was really is as real fake as you could get um those fights were you know people were throwing each other all over the place but um it was a good one man it was really exciting it's under control sir where's tyler sir the first rule of project mayhem is you do not have the prosthetics at the end something i had never done before i think it was the first time that i've worn prosthetics i remember getting super claustrophobic i fell asleep while they put this big life cast on me made out of plaster i fell asleep and then for like two minutes and then woke up and i was inside this thing and i didn't know where i was so i like started ripping it off running down the street and uh had a full-on just claustrophobic uh attack yeah i avoid those those they're called life casts i avoid those to this day requiem for a dream yeah requiem for a dream was it's a big one for me uh personally and you know made such a big impact in my life and my career it was just the 20th anniversary which is really hard to believe i i was talking with darren aronofsky about it and we just were like wait did someone get the dates wrong this is just impossible but yeah a life-changing experience i remember we knew that like there was this young genius in town darren aronofsky he had made a movie called pie and there was this group floating around by you know uh hubert selwy jr and darren and based on hubert's book and it was just absolutely you know stunning script brutal just a brutal brutal read and heartbreaking but you know something very very special and you know i fought really hard to be a part of that film and you know darren took a a chance on me and i'll always be so grateful for that but yeah i remember going to new york and living on the street and diving deep and really getting close to some of the folks that i met there that were living similar lives to harry cole farb hey what would happen if we went down they had a cop are you serious why not what the are you saying we supposed to welcome some room clerk at some hotel and ask him for a connection with it you're telling me that you can't nose out some dope when it's around [Music] man we got nothing to lose it's wide open and if we get there right away we can name our own price and we can sit back and be cool and have those fools come for the streets for us jennifer connolly one of one of the greatest and uh marlin uh one of the funniest and ellen a legend it was just really special we all felt like okay this is an opportunity to see what we're made of to push ourselves really hard and i did go through really intense body transformation for the role my thought was i wanted it i wanted the character to be in a place of constant you know starvation of craving of desire and food was a great way to do that i also just from on my own experience and education knew that you know it would be a good physical representation of somebody that was living in that world at that time really unique because i think darren demanded like eight weeks of rehearsal or something which is never you never do you know you're lucky if you rehearse at all on a movie and you know i think he was a little surprised when he thought you know he was encouraging us all to go deep when i went deep i don't think he expected it to go that far but it was a beautiful experience oh no no she'll come yeah i don't think there's there's no method in the world that could make your arm go away but uh i mean i guess there is but yeah i think there was a green you know there was a blue or green uh sleeve on it and uh or there was some kind of a trick i can't remember but effective i guess you know um and it was just like that that there were stays there were days that were just full of tears and pain and other days that were full of hope and dreams and hubert selby would always i think he would say that the book was about the american dream and how that can be a drug in and of itself a harrowing experience i remember almost every moment of that film it's funny how some things make such an impact on you mr nobody mr nobody is kind of my secret film uh you know most people never even heard of it but there was a movie i made right before that which maybe we should make a little special note of called chapter 27 played a guy named mark david chapman who uh had the you know distinct badge of uh taking john lennon's life um and i gained 67 pounds and it was a character study about this you know disturbed and disturbing person um and very very big physical transformation when i look back at it i kind of i wish maybe someone had stopped me and said no no no no maybe like 20 pounds is good maybe get some prosthetics uh but i i went for it and it was fascinating how the that gaining that 60 pounds changed the way that i walked that changed the way that i talked changed the way even that i laughed certainly i was unrecognizable i remember running into darren aronofsky at some oscar party and i still hadn't shed the weight from the film and i walked up to him at a party and i was face to face with him and this is a guy who noticed my face really well having directed it but he didn't even recognize me he said can i help you and i said it's me it's jared and then he just literally fell down on the floor like he fell down he slid down the wall onto his onto the floor with this face in his hands he could not believe that it was me it was quite quite a fun party trick but anyway that's chapter 27 very very very very challenging uh dark movie but you know um was it was a big step as far as the transformation and transformative uh approach to things and mr nobody it's my european movie it was made by a really beautiful team of collaborators in belgium uh but jacob and dormail was the director and he's just a terrific talent you know quite a beautiful experience really beautiful group of people that's a film for for the thinkers out there the philosophers i think it's it's a heady one can you tell me how old you are oh i'm 34. i was born february 9th 1975. who are you i'm mr nobody a man who doesn't exist i played the oldest band in the world 120 year old man 120 something and uh yeah i play i play you know a dozen or so versions of the same person all on you know parallel tracks uh diverging and crossing and when i played the old man i really felt you know kind of at home in a strange way it was a full prosthetics piece i thought they did a really great job as a team out of berlin yeah i really got into playing the old man that was quite funny and he looked a lot like my grandfather so i guess they got it right it was many many many hours but and i i wouldn't be able to do that again because i get pretty claustrophobic and you know that was full head piece i mean that goes on and you're you're in it you can't pull it off if you wanted to so it's uh yeah it makes my palm sweat just thinking about it dallas buyers club well it had been about five or six years since i made a movie i think and then uh i got this script and i was on tour with 30 seconds to mars at that point i really was so busy and things were going so well you know it was like why am i gonna get off this ride right now to go make a film i i wasn't in any hurry to make a film not to sound ungrateful but my brother and i had worked for so many years i mean we were signed as a band in 1998 we were making demos and playing music many many years before that so you know we had just finally started to get some traction i think we started playing uh arenas uh just a year or two before that all over the world and it was just like this impossible dream had come true so uh you know firmly entrenched in that world and and focusing on that and then this script comes along and i thought i just read it i just knew that it was something special fell in love with the character and the opportunity and the challenge and you know the the ability to kind of learn new things and to go on a brand new adventure relax i don't bite i guess you're handsome in a texas egg white trash dumb kind of get way out of here whatever you are before i kick you in the face you want to play cards you know for me what i remember are the people that were involved i remember the time and the places i remember being in new orleans for dallas buyers i remember you know the people that i met with that you know helped educate me and guide me and advise me and teach me and that support and that love i remember all of that as the the most um you know of course there's a whole other phase of that movie when it came out and you know it was uh well received and we won awards that's a whole nother kind of aspect but the making of film [Music] was again immersive transformative and um you know michelle mark vale just a really brave filmmaker and i knew matthew was in a place where he was doing just really incredible work so i felt happy just to be a small part of it to be honest okay i'm taking you to the hospital no no no no no rayon trust me no [Music] you're not gonna die no just trust me come on experience that weight loss that kind of starvation and that physical and mental tool when you're playing those roles yes definitely i don't know how you do it another way but everyone has their own method you know i have mine other people have theirs and you know they they to varying degrees we all have our methodology and um i kind of shy away from the term method actor because it i think has taken on negative connotations i always think if it's you know my approach to acting it's my job to do the best i can to help contribute in a meaningful way and to help tell the story help bring a character life to to be a pleasure to work with to be kind and generous to my other actors like all of that's part of the same bucket and um you know it's different people just have different approaches and you know uh i think it's up to everyone just to do what they're comfortable doing to contribute in in a meaningful way i mean people work so hard on movies you know directors writers 20 years that guy had the script for dallas buyers club and the producers in the studio the people that invest the money the crew you know when you show up you know i always think wow i i i this is i better not let anybody down i do remember the process though i did lose so much weight um people started treating me different which was good for the character and interesting and also surreal even off the set you know people i guess i looked like i was you know really ill or probably looked like i was dying you know it was interesting to see how people would deal with that um so that was that's something that you don't you you can't really imagine you just have to experience it suicide squad stepping into the joker shoes is like you know it's an incredible opportunity i guess it's this generation's version of like you know taking on a infamous shakespearean character lots of people have played the part before lots of people played it in the future so you really it's it's an opportunity to kind of to do something new and to explore you know uh challenging territory and we had a lot of fun with it um but it's it's also interesting how this stuff all takes on a life of its own uh but i i did i never gave margot robbie a a dead rat uh that's just that's not true i actually they gave her um you know a lot of i found this place in toronto that had great uh vegan cinnamon buns and that was a very uh common thing what do we have here i did everything you said i helped you ah you helped me by erasing my mind what creative memories i had oh you left me in a black hole of rage and confusion without the medicine you practice dr quinzel what are you gonna do are you gonna kill me mr j why i remember walking the streets of toronto at night and you know rehearsing my lines and going over things uh and and you know there there there's a lot of pressure when you are part of those big movies you know for not just forget the character for a second when you're part of these giant movies they're they're inherently come with even uh maybe more responsibility it feels like maybe it shouldn't and that's that's maybe my fault to not try to filter that out but um i've done mostly smaller movies i mean dallas buyers club was a four million dollar movie uh you know it's it's an experimental film in a lot of ways same with mr nobody it's it was a small independent a european film uh so that was like a step into a whole new world but it was it was it was a lot of fun and there was a just a mutual kind of respect and support on the set and you know just the feeling of camaraderie you know i stayed a little bit separate because i felt like my character was a little bit separate but i really was it was great to always hear all the laughter and the camaraderie that was you know in abundance on the blah set all of that chit chat's gonna get jerked oh my god and the other thing i loved on that set was a lot of times i'd play dark i'm in darker films and i played darker characters certainly in requiem you know uh there wasn't a ton of laughter on the set probably but what was fun with the joker was you know he he said such outlandish things all the time i could often hear the crew like stifling laughter or the camera which was on the shoulder would be shaking because people would be laughing and that was really fun just to kind of entertain the troops and play with with humor uh and then that that that experience kind of i i think you know is something that i carried with me and some of the other stuff that i've done blade runner 2049 ridley scott he played run the original blade runner i mean one of my top films for me just the genius movie i fell in love with that movie on vhs as a kid and watched it over and over and it just it taught me a lot about cinema and acting and set design and creativity i remember getting the call neander wallace and i was like okay as soon as i saw that name on the script i thought wow this is where do we go from here wes is amazing uh but i can't believe i got to be in blaver and i mean for me that's like you know just now i know i'm living in a simulation for sure yeah just just incredible to preserve the clay before we even know what we are i have these contacts made that were opaque so i couldn't see which was actually kind of great because i didn't have to get confronted with the problem of you know uh acting um like i couldn't see i actually couldn't see and i had a really wonderful teacher a guy named chris who was who is blind and uh an amazing coach and we actually modeled my eyes in the film after his eyes in real life and he was just just a really special person uh he's just a really special person and you know uh there's there's a lot of him in in that kind of in the physicality that performance i have wanted to meet you for so very long you are a wonder to me mr deckard working with harrison ford again a dream just i couldn't see him uh but that voice and i remember reaching out i had to hold his hand for a minute and that was great i know you know something help me and very very good things can come to you you don't have children do you well i have millions i'll tell you a quick candidate from that so we finished up the scene long shoot day very intense in this cavernous office you could hear your voice at going off the walls and we did the scene a bunch of times a bunch of times and it was my first day on set we're finished up and they kind of brought me shuffled me off to the side the the a.d did i was standing there alone and someone comes up to me and wraps their arms around me and gives me this huge hug very emotional hug i'm not sure because i couldn't see but i felt like there you know may have been like uh tears flowing uh and it was uh harrison ford and it was really special and beautiful moment and you know i think that he went somewhere really special on that scene and i was so happy to be there with him you know as he was uh putting such great work on the screen the little things well a good old albert sparma i'd be really happy if i saw him someone dressed up as albert's farmer for halloween that would be a fun one right you must really like my car i do how's the trunk space again it was incredibly transformational it was a different eye color different nose i had some other prosthetics i had different teeth um there was a walk and there was a different way of speaking and i really just wanted to bring to life a character that that people hadn't spent time with before and i felt like you know albert sparma from the name itself you knew he was someone different he's an outsider a bit of a dark horse and you know i wanted to explore that territory and you know just dove in deep [Music] how's the trunk space i was so thrilled to be working with one of my heroes in uh denzel washington you know the master of the goat he is uh just terrific and rami malek was just phenomenal partner in this you know i think the three of us felt like there was an opportunity here and we all just jumped in the ring with one another and you know it was it was explosive

Channel: GQ

Views: 474,256

Rating: 4.8702736 out of 5

Keywords: celebrity, iconic characters, iconic, jared leto, jared leto 2021, jared leto interview, jared leto gq, gq jared leto, jared leto character, jared leto characters, jared leto iconic characters, jared leto iconic, jared leto movie, jared leto movies, jared leto dallas buyers club, jared leto joker, jared leto suicide squad, jared leto blade runner, jared leto fight club, jared leto the little things, gq, gq magazine

Id: weU8PccjyeA

Length: 30min 2sec (1802 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/teleekom]

He seems quite normal and as down to earth as Jared Leto can be in this interview

[u/chadisdangerous]

There's no doubt this guy is a talented actor. He's fabulous in Dallas Buyers Club, for example, and he's had some solid success as a character actor here and there. The problem with Leto for a lot of people though, myself included, is that his screen presence tends to be awkward. Not awkward in a "cringe" kind of way, awkward in the sense that he has trouble disappearing into the world of a movie.

The best actors are effortless on screen. They just naturally slip into the character and you don't even think about it. Jeff Bridges is always my go-to example of that; I've seen dozens of his movies and I don't know if I've ever seen him break a sweat, figuratively speaking. The man walks onto screen like the character was just chilling off camera a few seconds before, and even in his most mannered characters (True Grit comes to mind) you don't feel like he's trying.

With Leto, though, you can see the effort. You can see the gears turning and you can see the mannerisms he's using to try and get into character. He has an artificial, self-conscious quality that makes him really stick out on screen sometimes. I think part of that is his off-screen reputation, which might not be fair when it comes to judging his acting but is hard to look past all the same. By all accounts he's an egotistical douche and we've heard about the extreme method acting mentality he would use for garbage like Suicide Squad and that shitty Mark David Chapman movie. I just associate him with effort and ego, and I wouldn't mind that if I didn't see it on screen but I totally do!

Anyone who's seen The Little Things might be able to recognize what I'm talking about there. Denzel is in that "Jeff Bridges" category of being effortless on screen, and has been that way for decades, but Rami Malek and Jared Leto (while both talented) have trouble slipping into those characters naturally.

[u/screaming_monk]

Decent actor. Just wish he wasn’t such an ass off the screen. (I’ve seen this first hand).

[u/10sharks]

Legend in his own mind

[u/mimaar]

He was so good on Dallas buyer’s club. That sealed the deal for me. I rate him as an actor.