How Jared Leto's Extreme Method Acting Turned Him Into Box Office Poison

For most of his career, Jared Leto was a supporting actor, best known as the teen heartthrob from My So-Called Life, the guy who got his face beaten to a pulp in Fight Club, murdered with an axe in American Psycho, and set on fire in Panic Room. He built his reputation around completely disappearing into roles, losing 25 pounds to play a heroin addict in Requiem for a Dream. After nearly two decades of supporting parts, he won an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club and suddenly looked poised to become a genuine leading man. Instead, almost everything that followed went wrong, from a widely mocked Joker to Morbius becoming an internet punchline to a growing list of expensive studio films underperforming with him attached.

Chapter 27's 65 Pound Weight Gain to Play Mark David Chapman Wrecked His Body

To play John Lennon's killer in Chapter 27, Leto refused to wear a fat suit and instead gained roughly 65 pounds because he believed physically carrying the weight would change how he stood, walked and moved. He force fed himself constantly, at one point microwaving pints of Haagen Dazs ice cream until they melted, then drinking the mixture with olive oil and soy sauce added to pack on even more calories.

The transformation worked, but it wrecked his body. His cholesterol spiked so badly that doctors wanted to put him on Lipitor, he developed gout, and by the end of filming the extra weight had become so painful that he sometimes needed a wheelchair to get to set. He later admitted it took roughly a year before his body felt even semi normal again, and said he would never gain that kind of weight for a role again.

Mr. Nobody's Failure Pushed Leto to Step Away From Acting for 30 Seconds to Mars

After Mr. Nobody bombed, Leto stepped away from acting entirely, admitting that pouring everything into independent movies only for them to disappear without finding an audience could break your heart and your spirit. At the same time, his band, 30 Seconds to Mars, had become enormously successful, giving him a creative outlet that did not depend on Hollywood and letting him make a living without taking film roles.

He later compared the decision to Daniel Day Lewis, another famous method actor who disappeared from acting for five years to learn shoemaking in Italy, joking that he had no interest in shoes but was fortunate enough to have music as a creative outlet instead.

The Echelon: How 30 Seconds to Mars Fandom Became Something Close to a Cult

Leto disliked the word fan because it felt dismissive, and after journalists repeatedly described the band as having a cult following, he decided to lean into the idea, calling his fans the Echelon. The band repeatedly blurred the line between fandom and personal devotion in ways that understandably made people uncomfortable. Fans who wanted to appear in the music video for Do or Die were asked to get the band's lyrics permanently tattooed onto their bodies, filming themselves saying "I am the Echelon" before going under the needle.

The band also ran a contest where fans could win the chance to stay at Leto's house, with one winner getting to sleep in his bed, although Leto himself was not there. There was also an adult summer camp for fans, with yoga, meditation, spiritual teachings, communal living, arts and crafts, ghost stories, hiking, and intimate concerts. Cost to participate neared 7,000 dollars, with fans often dressing in white while Leto appeared in flowing white robes.

Dallas Buyers Club Won Leto an Oscar After He Nearly Ignored the Script

Leto was not even looking to return to acting when Dallas Buyers Club came along. He was on tour when first approached, initially ignored the calls, and eventually read the script in Berlin and fell in love with it. To play Rayon, a transgender woman with AIDS, he lost roughly 30 pounds, waxed his body and eyebrows, changed his voice, and remained in character throughout production. Director Jean Marc Vallee later said that during their first meeting he never actually met Jared Leto, he met Rayon.

After the last scene wrapped, Leto allegedly turned to co-star Matthew McConaughey and finally introduced himself as Jared. He became so immersed in the character that he even claimed he began dreaming as Rayon. This time the commitment paid off spectacularly, and he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Suddenly, Hollywood began looking at him as a potential leading man rather than just an eccentric character actor.

Winning the Oscar Convinced Leto and Warner Bros to Push His Joker Even Further

Winning the Oscar had seemingly validated every one of Leto's most extreme method acting instincts, and when Warner Bros offered him the Joker, he pushed them even further, doubling down on everything that had just made him successful. With Dallas Buyers Club the transformation served the performance. With Suicide Squad, the transformation increasingly became the performance, with the actual acting taking a backseat to his antics behind the scenes.

Leto allegedly stayed in character throughout the entire shoot, to the point that his Suicide Squad co-star said the two of them worked together for six months without ever exchanging a word outside of their characters. That co-star joked that Leto had gone full Joker, and that the general rule is you should never go full Joker. Leto also became infamous for sending castmates bizarre gifts including a live rat, bullets, sticky Playboy magazines, and a dead pig delivered to the cast during rehearsal. He even claimed during the press tour that he had sent used condoms and anal beads, though he later denied it and said much of what was reported about his behavior was exaggerated.

The Joker Stories Oversold a Performance That Became an Internet Punchline

Whether every story was true almost did not matter, because the stories themselves became part of the movie's marketing. For months before release, audiences were bombarded with tales of how completely Leto had transformed into the Joker, implying that if he was that unhinged behind the scenes, his performance on screen must be extraordinary. Once audiences finally saw it, the stories suddenly seemed far more impressive than what actually ended up on screen.

His tattoo covered gangster version of the Joker became one of the film's most mocked elements, and the word "damage" tattooed across his forehead felt so on the nose that it became a symbol of how hard this version of the character was trying to look dangerous. Many critics called the performance cringey and accused Leto of trying too hard as the film underperformed at the box office, in contrast to Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight, which helped turn that movie into a genuine cultural event and box office juggernaut. To make matters worse, many of Leto's scenes were cut, leaving him with relatively little screen time compared to the months of stories about his commitment.

Blade Runner 2049 and House of Gucci Showed Leto Thriving Back in Supporting Roles

After Suicide Squad, Leto largely retreated from being positioned as the main attraction in massive studio movies and returned to disappearing into strange supporting characters. For Blade Runner 2049, playing a blind, god like industrialist, he wore specially designed opaque contact lenses that prevented him from seeing on set. Director Denis Villeneuve said Leto would arrive at rehearsals and camera tests completely blind, slowly guided around by an assistant, and that there were crew members and entire sets he literally never saw.

He took a similar approach even further in Ridley Scott's House of Gucci, playing Paolo Gucci. Having already gained more than 60 pounds for Chapter 27, this time he wisely let the makeup department do the heavy lifting, wearing a fat suit along with extensive facial prosthetics, a bald cap, and hair that transformed him so completely that when he approached Al Pacino on the first day of filming, Pacino brushed him off, apparently thinking he was just some random Italian man trying to talk to him. Someone eventually told Pacino, "That's Jared," leaving him stunned.

Leto did not stop there. He developed a high pitched Italian voice and Paolo's exaggerated physical mannerisms, and once again remained in character throughout filming. He had originally been offered the script with another role in mind, but after reading it became obsessed with Paolo, telling Ridley Scott that if he played the part he was going to go completely nuts, and that is essentially what he did. The performance was huge, ridiculous and almost cartoonish, and while divisive, it earned him SAG and Critics' Choice nominations.

WeCrashed's Adam Neumann Proved Leto Could Still Disappear Into a Role

He followed House of Gucci almost immediately with WeCrashed, playing WeWork founder Adam Neumann. Once again he transformed his voice, developed Neumann's Israeli accent, wore brown contacts, and spent roughly six months immersed in the character. The role fit him well, letting him play a magnetic entrepreneur who could walk into a room and make people believe almost anything.

Morbius Bombed So Badly Sony's Re-Release Turned Mockery Into a Bigger Flop

Despite Leto continuing to prove he could be excellent when disappearing into supporting roles, Hollywood had not given up on turning him into a conventional movie star. In 2022, Sony finally handed him an entire superhero franchise of his own with Morbius, with his face on the poster and his character in the title, clearly hoping it could become another major anti hero franchise alongside Tom Hardy's Venom.

Instead, Morbius bombed, was savaged by critics, and quickly became an internet punchline, spawning endless jokes about it being "Morbin' time." The memes became so widespread that Sony actually put Morbius back into more than a thousand theaters, mistaking online mockery for genuine interest in the movie. The re-release bombed too.

Tron: Ares and Masters of the Universe Continued the Same Pattern

Three years later, Disney made essentially the same bet with Tron: Ares, casting Leto as Ares, the titular program who crosses from the digital world into reality and sits at the center of a massive blockbuster. Before the film had even come out, Variety worried that while Leto is an Oscar winner, he was "not, to date, anything close to a box office draw." The film bombed too.

Then came Masters of the Universe. To be fair to Leto, he was not the leading man and was once again buried under a transformation, playing Skeletor. But he was still one of the movie's most prominent stars and the central villain in another enormously expensive franchise, and once again the movie failed to connect with audiences and underperformed at the box office.

The Real Misunderstanding of Jared Leto's Career

He can be a very good character actor, but he has never proven himself to be a genuine movie star or box office draw. The reason for that may be the increasingly ridiculous method acting stories and the cult like image he has deliberately cultivated around 30 Seconds to Mars, which has turned him into something almost farcical and, for many people, off putting.

Will Hollywood keep handing Jared Leto the chance to carry a movie, or has that window already closed?