Jared Leto's On-Set Behavior Confirms What We Suspected About His Acting Process

Jared Leto has earned a reputation for transforming himself for every role, becoming enveloped by each character he plays. The veteran actor has employed what many would call "method acting" throughout his decorated career. In 2001's "Requiem For A Dream," to portray a heroin addict, Leto lost 28 pounds, practiced living homeless on the streets of New York City, and maintained sexual abstinence to make sex scenes more realistic.  "I was in a constant state of hunger like my character," Leto told the BBC. "I was miserable. It was a painful, dark place, but it was rewarding." 

Leto's approach to method acting isn't always so drab. To play the larger-than-life Joker in 2016's "Suicide Squad," Leto ran wild with the persona. Telling E! News in 2016 that, while in character, he sent cast members "used condoms and anal beads," he later clarified to Entertainment Weekly these were joke (haha) gifts sent with "a spirit of fun and adventure." Leto's undeniable dedication to his craft paid off in 2014 when he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for "Dallas Buyers Club." Another role in which he shed extreme weight, Leto told The Wrap that he "stopped eating" to play the part of a transgender man living with HIV in the 1980s.

If one thought that Leto would be less serious in approaching the titular vampire in Sony's "Morbius," one... should have known better. Here's what happened when Leto stayed in character as Marvel's "living vampire" on-set.

Method acting, or self-indulgent Hollywood antics? To portray the sickly titular biochemist in "Morbius," Jared Leto apparently stayed in character constantly — even on bathroom breaks. When asked by UpRoxx, "Morbius" director Daniel Espinosa confirmed in April that Leto would even use his character's crutches to go to the bathroom. "I think that what Jared thinks, what Jared believes, is that somehow the pain of those movements, even when he was playing normal Michael Morbius, he needed ... because he's been having this pain his whole life," Espinosa explained to UpRoxx. However, the outlet reported that Leto's unusual bathroom breaks were holding up the shoot so much that production came up with a compromise: someone could push him in a wheelchair to the restroom instead, thereby expediting the process, while maintaining the sanctity of the character. 

This really makes one think: All this for "Morbius"? Twitter reflected on Leto's methods, with one fan opining that Leto has strayed from the ways of method acting. "'This actually has nothing to do with the method. Loosely, the method is about using your real experiences to inform your performances. Leto creates superficial, artificial experiences," he wrote. However, another argued that, because Leto "'becomes' the character and stays in character for longer periods of time," he is, therefore, "also method." But the funniest Twitter take on the story was one user's savage quip asking, "Jared Leto went all method for Morbius only to get 17% on rotten tomatoes?"