Jared Leto has recently come back to acting, appearing in the movie "Dallas Buyer's Club," as Rayon, an AIDS stricken transsexual, which premiered Saturday night, September 7, to enthusiastic Toronto Film Festival audiences.
Leto has lost a shocking 40 pounds for the role. "I stopped eating," he said when asked how he did it, adding that it was not an easy thing to do, that it had an extreme effect on him, changing how he thought, how he walked, talked, sat down. He dropped to a waifish 114 pounds.
Matthew McConaughey, who plays the lead, also had to lose a large amount of weight for the role, saying he stayed home for weeks and carefully monitored what he ate. He plays Ron Woodruff, a Texas electrician who has HIV, determined to go find a cure for himself and others similarly afflicted. Leto plays his friend Rayon who at the beginning unsuccessfully tries a prescribed treatment, and eventually helps him smuggle and sell alternative drugs from Mexico.
Jared Leto had stopped making films for five years, to focus on being the lead frontman of rock band Thirty Seconds To Mars, telling his manager he would only take a break from music for films he completely fell in love with.
It isn't the first time that the Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman manipulated his weight for a movie role. In 2007, he gained 60 pounds to play John Lennon's killer Mark Chapman in the film Chapter 27. Although he insists that gaining weight was an important factor in effectively portraying Chapman, he has said that he would never do it again, claiming that it had an adverse effect on his body, giving him gout and problems with walking, ultimately confining him to a wheelchair at the end of the day.
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