Ah, the enigma that is Jared Leto.
Some think of him as Jordan Catalano from the '90s TV show My So-Called Life.
Others are fans of his band, Thirty Seconds to Mars.
He also starred as the Joker.
But real life hasn't been easy for the star.
Jared Leto was born in 1971 in Bossier City, a small town near Shreveport in northwestern
Louisiana.
His dad, Tony Bryant, abandoned his family, which meant that Jared spent a chunk of his
childhood without a father.
Although it's not something he tends to bring up much, he made an exception during a press
conference at Cannes in 2014 while promoting Dallas Buyers Club.
His memories are few as Jared was just a baby when his father left the picture, but the
star made a snide remark while describing what he imagines were his father's last words
to him, saying,
"[H]e just flicked a cigarette and said, 'I'll see you kid, just going to the store to get
a carton of milk,' and never came back."
Jared would never see his father again.
When he was eight years old, his father committed suicide for unknown reasons.
Jared, his brother, Shannon, and their mother, Constance, moved in with her parents temporarily.
Due to the fact that Jared's grandfather served in the military, the future star moved to
multiple locations throughout the United States during his childhood, per ESME.
Constance eventually married Carl Leto, who adopted Jared and his brother.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Constance was a single mom for much of Jared Leto's youth, and at times relied on food
stamps to get by.
The star's admiration for his mother and how she raised him was on full display during
his heartfelt 2014 Oscars acceptance speech.
Addressing his wild child upbringing which involved foraging in forests and traipsing
around the world with his mom and brother, he explained how the experience gave him new
perspectives, saying,
"Just having the art-communal hippie experience as a child, there wasn't a clear line that
was drawn.
[...] We didn't try and curtail it and stunt any of that kind of growth."
The Leto family's bond is prominent in many of Jared’s and Shannon's songs performed
by their band, Thirty Seconds to Mars.
According to ESME, one song, “Depuis Le Début,” ends with a music box playing Tchaikovsky's
Swan Lake which is an ode to their mother, who used to put the boys to sleep by playing
that same music box.
He also credited his mom with helping him kick his drug habit.
But Jared Leto's Oscars speech was the biggest homage of all.
He told the audience at the 2014 Academy Awards,
"She was a high school dropout and a single mom, but somehow she managed to make a better
life for herself and her children.
She encouraged her kids to be creative, to work hard, and to do something special.
[...] I love you, Mom.
Thank you for teaching me to dream."
Cue millions of hearts a-fluttering across the globe.
By the age of 16, Jared had very little direction and thought for a time that he might become
a drug dealer.
He delved deep into the seedy underbelly of the drug scene as a teenager and dabbled in
petty theft, but eventually came to a fork in the road.
He told Big Issue,
"There was a moment, involving a gun and some cocaine, that may have been a turning point
for me.
I knew it wasn't good."
Fortunately, Jared managed to get his life under control.
He initially moved to Los Angeles soon after a stint in art school at age 19 to pursue
directing, where he quickly crossed over into acting.
At 22, he landed his breakout role as Jordan Catalano in My-So-Called-Life, becoming a
teen heartthrob overnight.
According to an interview with The Independent, he is essentially straight-edge now and refrains
from drinking or drugs.
He explained,
"The opportunity cost is too high.
Some drugs are incredible, but the risk versus reward is out of line.
I just saw too many examples of what not to do."
Jared Leto and his brother, Shannon, have played together in Thirty Seconds to Mars,
a controversial arena-rock band, since 1998.
Jared never had any specific ambitions to become any kind of celebrity or rock star
and in an interview with Rolling Stone, stated that he thought musicians and actors were
like magic, saying,
"It was royalty or you were born into it, or it was some stroke of luck or genius."
As a musician himself, Jared has experienced highs like his band setting a Guinness World
Record for most live shows during a single album cycle in 2011, with 309 concerts.
However, there have also been lows like an ugly $30 million lawsuit.
Jared told The Hollywood Reporter,
"This was not a fight against a record company, but against corruption.
A record company can be a beneficial thing — but a corporation that engages artists
with these convoluted contracts that leaves them in a state of terminal debt?
Just because you can get away with something doesn't mean it's okay to do."
Jared Leto seems to have a thing for choosing roles that require risky physical and psychological
transformations.
His first notable extreme part was playing a heroin junkie in 2000's Requiem for a Dream.
In order to be true to the role, he not only became celibate, but he also decided that
he had to lose a ton of weight and hang out with drug users on the streets of New York.
He told Al Bawaba,
"Every night was an adventure whether it was someone missing the vein in their arm and
their hand fills up with poison, or they overdose, or you're hanging out and it's like, 'remember
that girl we were hanging out with last night?
Well, she's dead!'
I got robbed one night but I just tried to become one of the group."
According to an interview with Movieline, Jared was left so traumatized by the end of
the film that he fled to a monastery where he fed on plain fish and potatoes.
Was it worth it?
That's up to the star to decide.
Jared Leto's strange, existential journey of getting into character for his role in
Requiem for a Dream didn't deter him from taking on even more challenging and dangerous
acting roles.
For instance, he swiftly gained a whopping 65 pounds for his role as John Lennon's assassin,
Mark David Chapman, for the film Chapter 27.
How did he gain that much weight so quickly?
He literally chugged pints of microwaved chocolate Häagen-Dazs ice cream twice a day.
Frankly, it's surprising he could gain weight this way, because the average person who did
that would be vomiting their calories on the regular.
In time, Jared ended up confined to a wheelchair because simply walking became painful, according
to DigitalSpy.
The experience also left him doubting if his body would ever get back to where it was prior
to the shoot.
Admitting that he ultimately regretted the experience, the actor told The Guardian,
"Really, it's a stupid thing to do.
I got gout, and my cholesterol went up so fast in such a short time that my doctors
wanted to put me on Lipitor, which is for much, much older people.
Again, though, a fascinating journey."
Ever the optimist, the star saw a diamond among the coal.
But did he learn his lesson?
Not really.
Not to be outdone by his previous performances, Jared dropped to a measly 116 pounds for his
award-winning turn as transgender character, Rayon, in Dallas Buyers Club.
He claimed in an interview with The New York Times that he would sometimes eat only half
a cucumber for an entire day, saying,
"The No. 1 rule is you have to stop eating.
The No. 2 rule is you have to stop eating."
He told Entertainment Weekly,
"Sometimes you just want to chew on something so you find something that has a lot of empty
calories.
I basically was chewing on shoe-leather, anything that would satiate the hunger a little bit."
Jared also shaved his eyebrows and assumed the form of a woman's body as much as possible
without undergoing surgery.
He also refused to break character on set, wearing his high heels everywhere.
But hey, he won an Oscar, so who's gonna argue with his method?
When Jared Leto commits to an idea, he obviously goes all in.
But when it comes to video directing, he'd rather his audience forget that he's the one
behind the camera.
That's why he created the pseudonym Bartholomew Cubbins.
Naturally.
Jared told The New York Times,
"It's one of my favorite Dr. Seuss characters.
I wanted not to have any of the distractions that may come along with putting my name on
a video that I was starring in."
Leto, or Cubbins, became a bit controversial when he directed a 13-minute short film for
Thirty Seconds to Mars' song "Hurricane," which was banned from television around the
world for its sexual, violent, and nightmarish imagery.
According to MTV, channels sent long lists of what was required to be censored in order
to secure airtime.
While MTV never banned the video, they did remove it from their rotation.
So what was so scandalous about the video?
An excerpt detailing the content described it, noting,
"A creepy gimp wearing a black suit and leather mask and toting a sledgehammer bursts into
the room, sending Leto flying out of a 40-story window to the street below."
Later, a rabbi, priest, and imam appear and toss their holy books into a bonfire.
Cubbins sure is an incendiary fellow.
Jared Leto's take on the Joker in 2016's Suicide Squad was so controversial that neither Warner
Brothers nor the public were thrilled by his interpretation of the infamous DC Comics villain.
"I never thought in a million years that I would have the chance to play a role like
this."
As for Jared, he blamed the editing, claiming that the film was recut from dramatic to comedic.
Sure, maybe.
What we do know is that the star terrorized his castmates during production, and true
to his method form, never broke character.
This included sending Margot Robbie, who played his character's love-interest Harley Quinn,
a love letter in a black box with a live rat inside.
He also sent bullets to Will Smith, and the cast received used condoms and adult toys,
as well as a dead pig for their first table read.
Charming.
During an E! News interview, Jared explained the reason behind what he had done, saying,
"I did a lot of things to create a dynamic, to create an element of surprise, of spontaneity,
and to really break down any kind of walls that may be there.
The Joker is somebody who doesn't really respect things like personal space or boundaries."
That's really all you need to know about how the film shoot went down.
But it sure made for an entertaining press tour.
In the end, Jared Leto's performance equated to about ten minutes of screen time in the
final cut of Suicide Squad.
To make things extra awkward, the star had originally been billed as a lead, and of course,
he didn't let that slide when it came time to promote the film.
"To the people who want more Joker, I say, me too."
However, despite negative reviews and the fact that studio execs were less than thrilled
with Jared's strange antics, there was still talk of a Joker and Harley Quinn spinoff in
development at Warner Brothers.
But then Jared decided to ruffle a few more feathers.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, he tried to halt production of Todd Phillips' Joker
film starring Joaquin Phoenix, who won Best Actor in 2019 for his noticeably different
interpretation of the villain.
This tiff also endangered Jared's relationship with his reps at the Creative Artists Agency.
So when it came time to make the spinoff, the studio decided to make a film about Harley
Quinn, 2020's Birds of Prey.
Jared wasn't invited to participate, nor was the Joker even written into the script.
Ouch!
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