JARED LETO | MYSTERY IS PART OF BEAUTY
ICON El País, June 2016
If someone tries to explain to you who Jared Leto is, run. Not because how complicated the elusive figure of this unpredictable actor, unstoppable rock idol, Carrera ambassador and now Joker for millennials, may appear to be. It’s just that using logic to define him would smash the magic.
“Making films is like climbing Mount Everest, it can be painful and brutal. A film can move people in the same way its filming may change an actor’s life”
Jared Leto has a problem with his image, a marketing guru would say. But he has no intention to change it. When he seems fitting enough to end up in one of those labeled compartments in which celebrities are often driven to, he more so enjoys doing exactly the opposite. If they take him as a well-known and respected actor in Hollywood, he then goes on and decides to leave the film industry for six years and win an Oscar with his return (it happened in 2014 with the film Dallas Buyers Club). If he is considered a post grunge star leading Thirty Seconds To Mars, band with which he enchants sold out arenas while being venerated as a god by teenagers wearing eyeliner, the guy goes and spends a weekend camping at a Malibu forest in a sort of spiritual communion with a thousand of those followers (he calls them the echelon; he hates the word fan). They meditate around a bonfire, sing karaoke and spend time doing everything a musician who has sold ten million copies of their album would never do.
He is famous for being a deep artist but he is also capable of joining commercial works like Suicide Squad, superhero film which opens August 5 and in which he plays The Joker, the Hamlet of the genre if we consider how coveted this role is. To complicate things even further, he has 44 inexplicable years and a face of a just turned 30. Jared Leto is, to cut it short, someone known by millions but that thanks to these maneuvers no one really knows.
Me myself, sitting in front of him by his pool at his Hollywood Hills’ house, can’t figure him out. I’m talking to a kind, introverted, intriguing, thoughtful guy who has greeted me with a fist bump and that is now devouring a vegan dish. But half an hour before, the team from ICON was photographing a rock star that moved in front of the camera like a panther, charismatic, visceral and hypnotic. He seems more comfortable in front of 20.000 fans than in front of my sad tape recorder. Is this the division between Jared, the actor, and the singer? “Well, making films is like… climbing Mount Everest”, he argues, enigmatic. “It can be something truly painful and brutal. You’re freezing, you’re near death and when you reach the top, God! You can barely enjoy those five minutes of reward because you’re worrying about getting back down. A film can move people in the same way it can change an actor’s life”.
Climbing Mount Everest requires a process of adaptation: breathing quickens because of the lack of oxygen, heart rate skyrockets. Listening to how Jared Leto replies to a question also requires adaptation. Perhaps because he’s shy, perhaps because he’s completely committed to the impenetrable persona he shows to the media. After all, Leto is famous because of the commitment he delivers to his job. In Suicide Squad, the worst and most dangerous seven supervillains of the DC universe agree, after being imprisoned, to cooperate in risky governmental secret missions in order to clean their record: some of his castmates ensure that they don’t know Jared, not even after weeks of filming, they only know his Joker who is actually the real star. In order to prepare for the role, the actor interviewed psychopaths and, according to Hollywood rumors, stayed on character for months. “I think the Joker lives in another dimension, like a shaman”, he explained. “It is a very toxic role. At the beginning I started by learning everything about him but I had to stop because he has been defined and reinvented multiple times. I had to educate myself and experiment a physical transformation. Besides, the Joker finds pleasure in violence, that’s why I met with psychiatrists and people who’ve been locked up for a very long time”.
I ask him if he feels a special pressure for having to fill the shoes of a role that has been amazingly delivered by Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger. He nods. “I did the best job that I was capable of doing. I’ve tried to do something very different, it couldn’t be any other way. I had to test new territories, even if that means I could fail. At this point, the rest is up to the audience. I did the best I could. I can’t change it now”.
The loneliness of a deep writer – “I’ve been more hours up on stage than in front of a camera. I’ve felt fulfilled with both, but the process is… different”, he reflects, elevated, visual, abstract, like an artist has to sound when he’s sitting by his pool in his Hollywood house. “Making films is an incredibly collaborative process, there’s a lot of people involved. Even in today’s photoshoot: look how many people we were. In order to create a song it only takes two people, or less: in my case, my brother Shannon and I. It’s something intimate that allows you to be tremendously selfish, and sometimes being selfish is important because it helps you listen to your own voice. I don’t recommend it for everything, but for music it can be something wonderful. It doesn’t matter whether you compose and nobody listens to you or whether you’re Mozart. The process can be as powerful as the outcome”. It makes a lot of sense but I don’t remember my question any longer. It could seem that Jared Leto is pulling a hugely long joke on human kind but reality advises to take him as a unique human being that comes from a highly unusual place.
“They gave Obama the worst job in the country. And I think he’s done an amazing job. I’m not one of those who thinks a president is a superhero”.
The silver lining – Not long after Leto was born in Bossier City (Louisiana), in 1971, his father abandoned the family home and the boy never saw him again. His father, committed suicide when he was only eight years old. Jared was raised along his brother by their mother Constance, a circus acrobat that raised their children in nomadism and under hippie values. They lived in an infinity of places, including Haiti, where the family worked in a free clinic. When he won the Oscar, in his heartfelt speech – two viral minutes in which he mentions Venezuela, Ukraine and the 36 million people that died because of aids – he dedicated the award to his family. “Today, I would still give the same speech”, he mentions. “There’s still people in both Venezuela and Ukraine fighting legitimately for their rights, risking to lose everything. And I would dedicate it again to my brother and mother. I would say something worth saying. You’re given a moment on a stage in which you can share something with the whole world, whatever you want, and I wanted to redirect that light that was on me back to important issues worth mentioning”.
And what would be worth changing in the world right now?
That’s a dangerous game: changing things before they have to be changed. One has to be cautious. I guess I would change ignorance. That our desires wouldn’t cloud our judgement. I wish we had the capacity of seeing people and the world without prejudices
The message shouldn’t surprise us: it works coming from him. In March 2014, Leto assured that one of his style inspirations was Jesus Christ, someone with whom he shared the long hair, the enlightened gaze and the accurate speech. There’s no doubt Leto’s style is always worth mentioning. His outfits for the Oscars have been described as “perfect for a 1974 prom dance” (The New Yorker, about the 2015 ceremony), but the actor is no alien whatsoever when it comes to fashion. In the last edition of the award ceremony, he was accompanied by Alessandro Michele, friend and designer of Gucci, and a few months ago he signed up as the new face of Carrera. With these sunglasses he shares a childhood bond. “My brother and I used to have a pair of Carrera and we shared them, they were some Porsche Carrera that could be folded and came in a little bag, so my memories of the brand remind me of a very special time in my life”.
There’s a spark of honesty in his words. As if that simplicity could be possible in the Donald Trump era. “I don’t know why people get surprised by the attention he’s receiving. Why wouldn’t he with the stuff he says? This allows us a great opportunity to take off our eye mask and see how things really are: we’re far from perfection and what’s happening it’s a reflection of it”.
This is another particularity Leto possesses: he is a man capable of seeing a positive side on Trump. “People are paying attention to politics thanks to him and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He’s making us debate about immigration. He has fomented a conversation, not only among the extreme republicans, also among all the other parties. I adore people from all over the world but in Los Angeles we have a special connection with Mexico. We’re neighbors. Not long ago Los Angeles was Mexican territory. Culturally we’re very similar. There is no difference between the north and the south of the border. I think culture is something beautiful. And Mexican culture makes California richer in every aspect. Cultures enriching each other makes the world a much more interesting place. Can you imagine if we had to eat the same dish every night? Consuming always the same type of art, design, architecture, music, or speaking the same language? I’m totally given into diversity. It’s strange how this scares people so much. But we’ll get through it, because things are far better now than ever before. There are people that want us to believe that that’s not how things are but they’ve never being better. Life quality. There’s too many people living in poverty in the world, but it’ll get better, I’m optimistic”.
It’s almost comical how tempting it sounds to turn tables and ask him to look for a negative side of the president he supported with such enthusiasm, Barack Obama. “They gave him the worst job in the country”, he says. “Economy was shattered. Confidence was at its lowest. The Middle East was in a disastrous situation. And I think he’s done a fantastic job. We’re lucky to be enjoying the stability we have in this country. I’m not one of those people that think a president is a superhero. There’s a thing called Congress, and it has the power to allow you to do things or not. History will book him a good place”.
Written by Lucas Arraut
Photography by Van Mossevelde +N
Styling by David St. John-James
Translated by letorgasm (twitter)
Please if you share this translation make sure to credit me, it took me quite a while to do it and it would be highly appreciated ♥
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