Actor Jared Leto isn’t exactly considered a standard “Hollywood-type.” He has a successful music career alongside his acting forays, with a massive global fanbase for his band, 30 Seconds To Mars. He’s well known for going to extremes and questionable antics while getting into character. He emaciated himself for Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream” (and his Oscar-winning performance in “Dallas Buyers Club”), suffered a case of gout when he put on weight for the movie “Chapter 27” and when he played the Joker in David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad” he went overboard, evidently sending used condoms/sex toys, and dead animals to co-stars. The latter claim Leto denies even though the original reports came from the actor himself.
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While it sounds like his “House of Gucci” cast was spared tasteless pranks, during a chat with I-D Vice, Leto revealed more of his strange preparations, with bizarre claims about how he captured the legacy of his real-life character Paolo Gucci. The actor is already under heavy makeup to transform himself to the point of being unrecognizable.
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“Bringing Paolo to life was like birthing a bowling ball out of my sphincter,” Leto told Vice about his experience on the new Ridley Scott film. “I keep saying my butt was shaking like two little chicken bones on that set. It was a very physical performance. There’s something about corduroy, I think: when you put it on, it’s like you can catch fire,”
Leto continued to go in an oddball direction with his answer, “I did it all. I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce by the middle of this movie,” he continued. “I had olive oil for blood. This was a deep dive I did. If you took a biopsy of my skin, it would come back as parmesan cheese! This is my love letter to Italy. There was a lot of work and preparation, and yes, I had an Italian accent, and I enjoyed and embraced that and lived in that space as much as I could, and for as long as I possibly could. I climbed into that creative cave and came out through the bowels and intestines into the esophagus of the one and only Paolo Gucci.”
If the above comment sounds extremely hyperbolic on Leto’s part, remember Lady Gaga claims she studied various wild animals to get into character. Maybe extremes were the order of the day for the drama.
In an attempt to be a little more serious, Jared Leto explains how he tackled Paolo’s accent, “There was a little bit of Paolo’s voice recorded so I based it partly on that, but the parts I didn’t have, I blatantly ripped off from the creative director of Gucci. I stole half of [Alessandro Michele’s] voice, to be honest.”
“House of Gucci” is currently playing in theaters, and no one should probably snort arrabbiata sauce before, after, or during screenings of the movie.
