Age, Biography, and Wiki
Jared Leto was born in Bossier City, Louisiana. His parents, Constance and Anthony Joseph Leto, divorced when he was young. Tragedy struck when Jared was eight years old, as his father committed suicide. Jared and his older brother, Shannon, were raised by their mother, who encouraged artistic pursuits. This upbringing led Jared to explore music and acting from an early age.
| Occupation | Environmentalist |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 26 December 1971 |
| Age | 53 Years |
| Birth Place | Bossier City, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Capricorn |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Jared Leto's physical attributes are often noted for his roles in films, where he sometimes undergoes significant transformations. However, specific measurements such as height and weight are not consistently detailed in public sources.
In 2007, Leto starred in the biographical film Chapter 27. He portrayed Mark David Chapman, a fanatic fan of The Beatles and the murderer of John Lennon. Leto prepared for his role by relying on interviews with Chapman and on audiotapes recorded by a librarian the actor met during a visit to the inmate's hometown. Leto gained 67 pounds to approximate the killer's physique. The abruptness of his weight gain gave him gout. He was forced to use a wheelchair due to the stress the sudden increase in weight put on his body. After the shooting of the film, he quickly went on a liquid diet. Chapter 27 premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Despite divided critical opinion on the film as a whole, Leto's performance was widely praised. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly considered his acting "a genuine transformation, as the actor submerges himself in Chapman's couch-potato flab and red-rimmed eyes. ... Leto disappears inside this angry, mouth-breathing psycho geek with a conviction that had me hanging on his every delusion."
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Dating & Relationship Status
Jared Leto is known for keeping his personal life private. He has been linked to several celebrities over the years but prefers not to publicize his relationships extensively.
"Connie" Leto (née Metrejon), who was a teenager at the time of his birth. , of Cajun ancestry, and to Anthony L. "Tony" Bryant. Shannon Leto, his older brother, was also born from this marriage. His parents divorced when he was a child, leading Leto's family to move frequently to different cities around the country, from Louisiana to Wyoming to Virginia. "My mom's father was in the Air Force," Leto has explained, "so moving around a lot was a normal way of life." Even so, Leto's family was poverty-stricken and found themselves occasionally living in a truck or off of food-stamps.
"Leto" is the surname of his stepfather, opthalmist Dr. Carl J. Leto M.D., who provided Leto's family with financial stability; however, his mother and stepfather ended up divorcing too. Despite this, Jared credits his mother and stepfather for catering his talents and encouraging creativity within his family. Leto's family adapted the surname as their own, even after the divorce. Since then, Leto has been estranged from his stepfather. While Leto's father Anthony Bryant remarried as well, he died by suicide shortly after. Leto was eight at the time of his father's death. Bryant left a son, Leto's paternal half-brother Matthias, from his second marriage. Leto's family then settled in Haiti for a brief period while his mother volunteered at a rescue facility. Finally moving back to the states, Leto's family moved into the home of his maternal grandparents, Ruby Mae (Russell) and William Lee "Willie" Metrejon. -->
His mother has Cajun ancestry. Leto is his stepfather's surname. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he and his older brother, Shannon, lived with their mother and their maternal grandparents, Ruby (Russell) and William Lee Metrejon. After he remarried, his father died by suicide when Jared was eight. Leto moved frequently with his family from Louisiana to different cities around the country. "My mom's father was in the Air Force," Leto has explained, "so moving around a lot was a normal way of life." Leto has two younger half-brothers from his father's second marriage.
Leto played Paul Allen, a rival of Patrick Bateman, in the psychological thriller American Psycho (2000). Though the film polarized audiences and critics, Leto's performance was well received. The same year, he starred as heroin addict Harry Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream, an adaptation of Hubert Selby, Jr.'s novel of the same name, directed by Darren Aronofsky and co-starring Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans. To prepare for his role, Leto lived on the streets of New York City and refrained from having sex for two months prior to shooting. He starved himself for months, losing 28 pounds to realistically play his heroin addict character. After the shooting of the film, Leto moved to Portugal and lived in a monastery for several months to gain weight. His performance received critical acclaim by film critics who notably praised the actor's emotional courage in portraying the character's physical and mental degradation. Peter Travers from Rolling Stone commented that Leto "excels by going beyond Harry's gaunt look to capture his grieving heart. His scenes with Ellen Burstyn as Sara, Harry's widowed mother, achieve a rare poignancy as son and mother drown in delusions."
Leto next appeared in the independent film Highway. Set in 1994, Jack Hayes (Leto) is caught with the wife of his employer, a Vegas thug, and flees to Seattle with his best friend, Pilot Kelvin (Jake Gyllenhaal), in the week preceding Kurt Cobain's suicide. Filming finished in early 2000, but the film was not released until March 2002 on home video formats, although originally scheduled for a theatrical release.
In 2012, Leto made his directorial debut with the documentary film Artifact. It chronicles the modern music business as it charts the legal dispute between Thirty Seconds to Mars and EMI, after the band tried to exit its contract over a royalties dispute. Artifact was made on a limited budget provided by Leto and personal assistant Emma Ludbrook through the production company Sisyphus Corporation. It premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival where it received the People's Choice Award for Best Documentary. Critics praised the examination of the state of the modern music industry and its focus on the relationship between artists and record companies. The film received a limited theatrical release beginning November 23, 2013, before being released digitally on December 3, 2013.
After the strong relationship between Thirty Seconds to Mars and its audience, Leto launched the social media management and digital marketing company The Hive. It is based in Studio City, Los Angeles and focuses on creative community building. In recent years, it has expanded to other artists such as Jessie J and Semi Precious Weapons. In 2010, Leto launched The One and Only Golden Tickets, a full service company which operates worldwide and manages exclusive services for concerts, festivals, and events. In 2013, the company was renamed Adventures In Wonderland.
He began dating actress Cameron Diaz in 1999; they became engaged in 2000, but ultimately split up in 2003. From 2015 to 2022, he was in a relationship with Russian model Valery Kaufman.
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Net Worth and Salary
Jared Leto's net worth is reported to be around $90 million by several sources, though there is some discrepancy with estimates as low as $40 million. His earnings come from a successful acting career, including notable films like "Dallas Buyers Club" and "Suicide Squad," as well as from his music career with Thirty Seconds to Mars.
Leto returned to acting in 2002 with the thriller Panic Room, which marked his second teaming with director David Fincher. He played the supporting role of Junior, a burglar who terrorizes Jodie Foster's character Meg Altman. The film was well received by critics and became a financial success, grossing nearly US$200 million worldwide. Leto's next film was the 2004 biographical film Alexander, directed by Oliver Stone. He portrayed Hephaestion, the closest friend of Alexander the Great. The film failed in the United States; Stone attributed its poor reception to disapproval of the depiction of Alexander's bisexuality, but it succeeded internationally, with worldwide revenue of US$167 million.
Business Ventures
Jared Leto has ventured into digital entrepreneurship. He founded The Hive, a social media management and digital marketing company, and launched VyRT, an online platform for live video streaming services, in 2011.
Jared Joseph Leto (born December 26, 1971) is an American actor and musician. Known for his method acting in a variety of roles, he has received numerous accolades over a career spanning three decades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Additionally, he is recognized for his musicianship and eccentric stage persona as frontman of the rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars.
After starting his career on the television series My So-Called Life (1994), Leto made his film debut in How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and gained critical attention for his performance in Prefontaine (1997). After supporting roles in The Thin Red Line (1998), Fight Club (1999), Girl, Interrupted (1999) and American Psycho (2000), he received praise for his lead role as a drug addict in Requiem for a Dream (2000). He then began to focus more on music, but returned to acting with Panic Room (2002), Alexander (2004), Lord of War (2005), Chapter 27 (2007), and Mr. Nobody (2009). His performance as a trans woman in Dallas Buyers Club (2013) earned him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He has since starred in Suicide Squad (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), The Little Things (2021), and House of Gucci (2021), the latter two of which earned him nominations for a Golden Globe Award.
In 1992, Leto moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in directing, intending to take acting roles on the side. He found minor roles on television shows but his first break came in 1994 when he was cast opposite Claire Danes as Jordan Catalano, her love interest, in the short-lived but well-reviewed ABC teen drama My So-Called Life. The show was praised for its portrayal of adolescence and, despite its cancellation after one season, gained a strong cult following. The same year, Leto made his television film debut starring alongside Alicia Silverstone in Cool and the Crazy, and landed his first film role in the 1995 drama How to Make an American Quilt. He later co-starred with Christina Ricci in The Last of the High Kings (1996) and got a supporting role in Switchback (1997).
Leto formed the rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars in 1998 in Los Angeles, California with his brother Shannon. When the group first started, Jared Leto did not allow his position of Hollywood actor to be used in promotion of the band. Their debut album had been in the works for a couple of years, with Leto writing the majority of the songs. Their work led to a number of record labels being interested in signing Thirty Seconds to Mars, which eventually signed to Immortal Records.
During this period Leto focused increasingly on his music career, working with producers Bob Ezrin and Brian Virtue on his band's debut album 30 Seconds to Mars, which was released on August 27, 2002, in the United States through Immortal and Virgin. It reached number 107 on the US Billboard 200 and number one on the US Top Heatseekers. Upon its release, 30 Seconds to Mars was met with mostly positive reviews; music critic Megan O'Toole felt that the band managed to "carve out a unique niche for themselves in the rock realm." The album was a slow-burning success, and eventually sold two million copies worldwide.
The following year, Leto starred together with Nicolas Cage in the political crime thriller Lord of War. He played Vitaly, the younger brother of illegal arms dealer Yuri Orlov. The film was officially endorsed by the human rights group Amnesty International for highlighting the arms trafficking by the international arms industry. It was positively received by movie critics and was a moderate commercial success.
It took two years to record Thirty Seconds to Mars' second studio album A Beautiful Lie, with the band traveling to four different continents to accommodate Leto's acting career. A Beautiful Lie was released on August 30, 2005, in the United States. It has since been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and has reached platinum and gold status in several countries, with a sales total of over four million. The band heavily toured in support of the album and played at several major festivals, including Roskilde, Pinkpop, Rock am Ring, and Download.
The same year, Leto directed the music video for "The Kill", a song by Thirty Seconds to Mars. At a press release, he stated that an "insanely obnoxious Danish albino" named Bartholomew Cubbins directed the video. He later explained his decision to direct with a pseudonym saying, "I really wanted people to be able to enjoy and experience the video without having any more preconceived notions or distractions, and just to let it be what it was. It wasn't important for me to lay claim to it in that way." Bartholomew Cubbins is a recurring character in the Dr. Seuss universe and one of Leto's favorite characters created by the writer. "The Kill" was inspired by themes of isolation and insanity present in the Stanley Kubrick-directed psychological horror film The Shining (1980). Leto said, "The idea of isolation, identity, and self discovery were all elements present in the song. I thought this light homage was a good starting point and it soon grew to include many more elements outside of Kubrick's original piece." The short film received a largely positive response and numerous accolades, including an MTV Video Music Award. Leto next directed a short film for "From Yesterday". It was filmed in the Forbidden City and became the first ever American music video shot in the People's Republic of China in its entirety. Hundreds of costumed extras were employed for the shoot, inspired by the empires of ancient Chinese dynasties. Leto drew inspiration from Bernardo Bertolucci's historical drama The Last Emperor (1987) as well as the work of Akira Kurosawa.
Leto played suspected serial killer Albert Sparma in John Lee Hancock's 2021 film The Little Things. The film earned him nominations for a Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award—both for Best Supporting Actor. Leto portrays fashion designer and business magnate Paolo Gucci in Ridley Scott's biographical crime drama film House of Gucci, for which he was nominated for a Satellite Award, Critics' Choice Movie Award and Screen Actors Guild Award.
In 2011, Leto launched the online platform VyRT. Created as a live video streaming service, it also features social networking and official merchandise. Its idea came from some frustrating experiences Leto faced with Thirty Seconds to Mars in streaming their own live events. In June 2012, VyRT was awarded Best Online Concert Experience at the O Music Awards. In 2012, Leto became an investor in Surf Air, a California-based air service. He is also a funder for Reddit and Robinhood Markets.
Leto has supported Aid Still Required, a non-profit corporation committed to bringing attention and humanitarian aid to areas suffering from natural disasters or human crises. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, he released a book of photographs taken during his trip to the Caribbean country in 2011, in a bid to raise funds for the earthquake-ravaged country. He has connected with and helped various organizations since arriving there, including J/P Haitian Relief Organization. Leto spent a year in Haiti during his childhood, and returned there in January 2011 to "reconnect" with his former home following the tremor of January 2010. On September 30, 2014, Leto hosted the event Haiti: The Journey Is the Destination in New York City, benefitting those affected by the 2010 earthquake in the Caribbean country. In February 2015, Leto was named a global ambassador for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), supporting online fundraisers and leading one for his 47th birthday in 2018.
Social Network
Jared Leto is active on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, where he engages with fans and shares updates about his projects.
In 2006, Leto appeared in the neo-noir crime drama Lonely Hearts, the true story of the notorious "lonely hearts killers" of the 1940s, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck. Playing Fernandez, he co-starred with Salma Hayek who played the role of Beck. The film received mixed reviews from critics; however, Leto's acting was widely praised; Heather Huntington from Reelz wrote that his "layered performance as the nattily dressing dandy with no remorse is truly impressive."
In 2014, Leto premiered the documentary series Into the Wild, which tells the story behind the concert tour of the same name by Thirty Seconds to Mars that propelled the group into arenas around the world and was certified by the Guinness World Records as the longest running tour in the history of rock music. The series was produced by Leto and Emma Ludbrook and was released through the online platform VyRT. On November 3, 2015, it was announced that Thirty Seconds to Mars were working on their fifth studio album.
Leto's method acting on Suicide Squad also reportedly involved sending unorthodox gifts to his fellow cast members, including live rats and bullets. His co-star Margot Robbie said that he gifted her a live rat, which she stated she kept as a pet until her landlord discovered it. Speaking with Vanity Fair, Viola Davis stated, "He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts. He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto." In an interview with E! News at the film's premiere in 2016, Leto claimed that he also sent anal beads and used condoms to his co-stars, stating, "I did a lot of things to create a dynamic, to create an element of surprise, of spontaneity, and to really break down any kind of walls that may be there. The Joker is somebody who doesn't really respect things like personal space or boundaries."
In a 2021 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Leto claimed that the comments he made at Suicide Squad premiere were "in jest", and stated that, "there were no used condoms [...] Any of the very few gifts that were ever given were given with a spirit of fun and adventure and received with laughter, fun, and adventure. It's all filmed! They filmed it all! People were dying. We were just having a goof." Regarding the rat he reportedly gave Robbie, he stated, "The only gifts I ever gave Margot were cupcakes. I think I gave her a mouse, and some of the other guys got gifts that you'd get as a joke at a party." He also added, "I'm an artist at the end of the day. If I do something risky and you don't like it, basically, you can kiss my ass."
Education
After dropping out of high school briefly, Jared Leto returned to complete his education at Emerson Preparatory School in Washington, D.C. He then attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City to study filmmaking, although he initially enrolled at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia for a brief period.
After dropping out briefly in the 10th grade, Leto decided to return and focus on his education at the private Emerson Preparatory School in Washington, D.C. He was interested in large-scale visual art and enrolled at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. After developing an interest in filmmaking, he transferred to the School of Visual Arts in New York City. While he was a student there, he wrote and starred in his own short film, Crying Joy. He also attended the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, now a part of George Washington University.
In 1999, Leto played a gay high school teacher who attracts the attention of Robert Downey, Jr.'s character in Black and White, and had a supporting role in the drama Girl, Interrupted, an adaptation of the memoir of the same name by Susanna Kaysen. He then portrayed Angel Face in Fight Club (1999), a film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name, directed by David Fincher.
