For 2007’s Chapter 27, Jared Leto packed on 67 pounds to play John Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman.
For his Oscar-winning role in Dallas Buyers Club (2013), Leto shed about 30 pounds to play the HIV-positive hustler Rayon.
And now for his new comic book movie Morbius, he put his body through both a dramatic weight loss to play a scientist suffering from a rare blood disease, and just as hefty a weight gain (albeit mostly muscle) after his title character develops superhuman abilities from injecting his body with vampire bat DNA.
“I’ve done a lot of this in films,” Leto tells Yahoo Entertainment in a new interview for the third entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, explaining that it’s actually easier for him to lose weight than to gain it and recommending no one intentionally gain 67 pounds in a short period of time like he did.
“It’s not a fun thing. It’s a very hard, bad thing to do to your health and your body,” he says.
“Losing weight is different because there’s something about that restraint that we humans have explored for thousands of years. You know, restriction, meditation as a way to find oneself, as a spiritual part of a spiritual quest. And there’s something to that process that is interesting. Gaining, I think is significantly harder, to be honest, especially that amount of weight cause you gain it and you lose it. When you lose weight, your body naturally wants to come back… Morbius is kind of the perfect film for me and the things that I’m interested in as an actor, which is big physical challenges [and] emotional challenges.”
Whether it was staying in character as the Joker in Suicide Squad or disappearing under prosthetics in House of Gucci to the point that co-star Al Pacino didn’t recognize him, Leto has developed a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most intensely committed actors. His Morbius collaborators back that up.
“I’ve never experienced that and he stays pretty close to the character the whole time, physically, mentally, emotionally,” says Matt Smith, who plays Michael Morbius’s surrogate brother-turned-villain Milo. “Once he’s in that zone, he’s there.”
“It’s an honor as a director to work with somebody who’s not just committed, but obsessed,” says director Daniel Espinosa. “That motivates the whole crew… to be with somebody who is so immersive at times, it got almost a bit scary ‘cause he’s very committed and those transformations, sometimes it looked like they would tear him apart.”
“It was really interesting to work with someone,” agrees Adria Arjona, who plays Morbius’s scientist colleague (and prospective love interest) Martine Bancroft. “Like Danny was saying, I think sometimes [it was] very scary. I would see his back and I would see what he had to do with his body physically. And he would spend hours and he would not break character. And I just couldn’t imagine being in that position for so many hours. And what that sort of did to his body, it was really impressive, but also terrifying to see.”
Morbius is now in theaters. Watch our full interviews with Espinosa and the cast above.
— Video produced by Anne Lilburn and edited by John Santo
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