Jared Leto—rockstar, actor, director, fashionisto, Men’s Health April cover guy—is a rock climber now. He’s been at it for a few years. It started during the making of Leto’s documentary, Great Wide Open, something like an ode to national parks and romping around in the wilderness. He’s now friends with photographer and Free Solo co-director (and overall legend) Jimmy Chin, as well as climber and Free Solo star (and overall climbing god) Alex Honnold. It was with Honnold that in March of 2020, Leto almost plummeted to his death. But that’s all part of the climb.
Leto was climbing Red Rock in Nevada with Honnold when he fell. On his Instagram at the time, Leto described the harrowing experience in more detail: “Not to sound dramatic, but this is the day I nearly died. Took a pretty good fall climbing with @alexhonnold at Red Rock. Looked up and within seconds the rope was being cut by the rock while I dangled some 600 ft in the air. I remember looking down at the ground below.”
Leto wrote it was “less fear, more matter of fact.” Still, he wasn’t super comfortable with the dangling. “It was like an acceptance, and a little bit of sadness,” he tells Men’s Health in our latest cover story. “It wasn’t even fear. It was like, ah, not now.”
Leto says the near-fatal experience helped him come to terms with death, even if he’s not quite ready for it. Leto is something of a stoic when it comes to bodily decay, though. Things don’t last—one’s health, one’s ability to climb. When that happens, you just turn to other things. “Your physical body might give out on you, or your brain, and maybe then you turn away from some objectives and you can turn toward others,” Leto says. “You can be a hundred years old and take a very deep, mindful breath. That probably has its own challenges and rewards.”
Apparently, after the fall, Leto and Honnold kept on climbing into the night.
Read the full cover story here.
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