The One Tragedy That Changed Jared Leto Forever

Jared Leto has enjoyed tremendous success in his life, not only in his career as an actor, but also as a musician and rock star. Not very many artists can boast about having an Oscar and fronting one of the 21st century's most popular rock bands, as Spin has argued. And Leto has managed to keep both careers going strong concomitantly. He and his bandmates released Thirty Seconds to Mars' first album, "30 Seconds to Mars," in 2002, just two years after Leto knocked the wind out of all of us with his performance in Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream." The band's successful second album, 2005's "A Beautiful Lie," came out around the time he was sharing the screen with Nicolas Cage in "Lord of War" and with John Travolta, James Gandolfini, and Salma Hayek in "Lonely Hearts."

In fact, Leto worked on the 2013 biographical drama "Dallas Buyers Club," a performance that earned him not only an Academy Award, but also Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild accolades for his portrayal of a transgender woman, the same year Thirty Seconds to Mars released "Love Lust Faith + Dreams," an album that debuted at No.6 on the Billboard 200 chart, per The Hollywood Reporter. 

Leto's résumé, or whatever the equivalent is for an actor-slash-musician, is nothing short of impressive. But his early choices may have taken his life in a completely different direction. Keep reading to learn about the life experience that Leto described as a "turning point."

Jared Leto only saw two career paths for himself: being an artist or a drug dealer. In a 2013 interview with The Big Issue, Leto described his realization when he was 16. "[T]here was a moment, involving a gun and some cocaine, that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good," he wrote. Those days, he was doing more than just drugs. 

Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2016, Leto noted he was arrested more than once, and admitted to engaging in petty theft, though he was never caught for it. "[T]here were some undercover cops at one store, and they came out running after us. My friend ran out of steam and kind of slowed down. They grabbed him and threw him to the ground, and I just kept running," he said.

Leto realized he needed to make a decision. After dropping out, he returned to high school and decided he was going to pursue a career in the arts. Acting was not what he had in mind, though — he wanted to be a painter. He enrolled in New York City's School of Visual Arts where he studied painting and photography, per Rolling Stone. If it hadn't been for his creative pursuits, Leto would've most likely ended up in a very different place. "Without that option I'm not so sure I would have had a path out of my own challenges," he said, according to The Big Issue. 

Jared Leto then wanted to pursue a career as a film director, per Rolling Stone. So he packed up his things and moved to Los Angeles when he was 19, he told the Irish Independent. Leto began auditioning for parts hoping that acting might lead to some directing work. But that plan changed when, at 22, he snagged the part of Jordan Catalano in the ABC teen drama "My So-Called Life" in 1994, the love interest of the character played by Claire Danes. 

The one-season show was a turning point for Leto, even though he only spent a few months working on it and didn't think much of it at the time. "I feel like it was such a short period of my life. Let's face it, I barely spoke! I have a lot of gratitude for starting there, but they made such a big deal of the character in the show," he told Rolling Stone.

But the role caught the attention of casting agents, he told the Independent. The year the show was canceled, he paired up with Alicia Silverstone in "Cool and the Crazy" and the roles just kept rolling in. The career of an actor was born, though the right-brained Leto needed more. He had already been dabbling in songwriting when he convinced his brother, Shannon, to move to Los Angeles, per Rolling Stone. In 1998, the Leto brothers launched Thirty Seconds to Mars and Hollywood gained its coolest actor-rock star.