Jared Leto

The evolution of Jared Leto’s (birthname: Jared Joseph Leto) acting career—one he didn’t intend when he jumped into the film business—is from being a mere actor to a chameleonic screen presence. His first phase, which runs from 1995 and his feature debut in How to Make an American Quilt to Lonely Hearts in 2006, involved Leto establishing himself as an interesting supporting actor with the visible potential for leading status.

That came in 2007 when Leto played John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, in Chapter 27, and continued with Leto top-lining Jaco Van Dormael’s ambitious fantasy, Mr. Nobody. Quite often, actors who win an Oscar experience a career dip; it even happened to such greats as George C. Scott after Patton (1970). Not for Jared Leto. His flamboyant performance as an ailing gay man in Dallas Buyers Club (2013), for which he won a flurry of awards including the supporting actor Oscar, catapulted his worldwide status and visibility.

He joined The Suicide Squad (2016) as The Joker, the first time that character appeared in a movie not featuring Batman, then followed with a string of starring and supporting characters living on the dark side—Nick in the Yakuza-themed The Outsider (2018), killer Albert Sparma in The Little Things (2021), his reprise of The Joker in Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) and his controversial turn as Paolo Gucci in The House of Gucci (2021), which garnered both serious awards talk as well as a Razzie for worst performance of the year. 

Jared Leto has steered a second career as band leader of a busily touring unit known as 30 Seconds to Mars (including directing and performing in over a dozen of the group’s music videos). He has a third career as an entrepreneur specializing in minority and majority investments in high-tech startups and diversifying in such brands as Blue Bottle Coffee, exemplifying one of the ways in which the current generation of movie stars have learned to expand their business away from the movies themselves. 

Before he had movie ambitions, Jared Leto desired to be a visual artist. This led him to study at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, but his efforts to transfer to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts failed when he was turned down. His education ended after he transferred to New York’s School of Visual Arts, from which he soon dropped out.

At this point, he set his sights on a movie career in Los Angeles, determining that doing some acting would train him on being a director. Leto’s first two years in Hollywood were in the TV business, most notably in My So-Called Life opposite Claire Danes (1994-1995). He stayed away from TV for the next 26 years until 2022, when he appeared as Adam Neumann in the streaming series, WeCrashed. 

Leto is solidifying his position as a leading man with Morbius (2022), a dark-tinged entry in the Marvel Comics Universe, and as the star of Darren Aronofsky’s thriller, Adrift (2023). It marks Leto’s reunion with Aronofsky, who directed him in Requiem for a Dream in 2000.