Jared Leto Recalls the Negative Treatment He Received After Gaining 60 Pounds for a Role

etonline.com:

Jared Leto is opening up about his famous transformations. The 50-year-old actor covers the April issue of , and talks about how dramatically changing his appearance for roles impacts his own life.Leto has played everyone from The Joker to Paolo Gucci, always staying in character on set, and always adapting how he looks for the role.While Leto's aware that his dedication to the projects won't actually turn him into the people he's playing, he tells the mag, «Your job is to bring to life the spirit of the person that’s depicted in the story, to serve the story...

I’m thinking about the heart of the character, the soul, the spirit.»«Those other things,» he says of the prosthetics, the makeup, the bodily transformations, «it’s the description.»In the end, he explains, the physical changes he goes through are less about looking like a particular person, and more about getting insight into how that person walks through life.«How does it change the way you walk?

How does it change the way you talk? How does it change the way people treat you?» he says of changing his own appearance for the sake of a role. «I gained over 60 pounds for a role once, and it was amazing.

I remember asking someone for the time in New York and they, like, recoiled,» Leto recalls. «I saw people I knew who didn’t know I was filming and thought… that I had 'not been taking care of myself.' They took it as a sign of something wrong in my life.