Oscar front-runner Jared Leto underwent a serious transformation for his role in Dallas Buyers Club. He and director Jean-Marc Vallee talk to Helen Barlow.
The first time Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallee set eyes on Jared Leto via Skype, the actor was in drag as Rayon, the transgender prostitute he would go on to play in the movie.
"He had on a wig, a dress, was putting on lipstick and was hitting on me and he was talking with a girl's voice," Vallee recalls. "When he arrived on the set he got off the plane dressed as a woman, he went to the hotel as a woman, he never got out of the character. He never introduced himself as Jared, never talking with his own voice, even with Matthew. Everyone met him for the first time when he came to the Toronto Festival for the film's world premiere."
Nobody could deny that Leto, now a youthful 43, is beautiful. After six years away from movies and having established himself as a musician as the frontman of band Thirty Seconds to Mars, he felt free to return and do whatever he wanted to in movies. If former beefcake Matthew McConaughey could lose 23kg to play the movie's leading man, Ron Woodroof - who sold unapproved Aids remedies to fellow victims after his own diagnosis in 1986 - Leto could lose weight and transform himself, too.
"I thought that if Matthew's willing to bet on this, I'm willing to join him," Leto continues. "I knew he'd made a commitment already and was losing weight, and of course I'd done that before for Requiem for a Dream and I'd gained weight as well [for Chapter 27 as John Lennon's murderer, Mark David Chapman].
