On the Dark Side with Jared Leto

by Chip Brantley

The climax of Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream represents one of the most grueling moments ever in movie history, as hopeful lives collapse at once into a horrific but believable doom. According to Jared Leto, one of the film's stars, this took some on-set horror of its own.

"It was a brutal thing to film," says Leto, who plays the film's central character, Harry Goldfarb, a Brooklyn kid with big dreams but an unfortunate hankering for smack. "Between losing all the weight"--Leto lost 25 pounds for the role--"and all the other things we were focusing on, it was a lot like watching the film--horrifying, shocking, painful, intense. It was a dark, dark, dark time."

When it comes to his work, Leto should be used to the darkness by now. Since 1998, when he co-starred as a scandal-hungry college journalist in the teen slasher Urban Legends, Leto has favored the grim and gloomy, playing a soldier in Terence Malick's WWII epic The Thin Red Line, a terrorist lacky in David Fincher's The Fight Club, and the all-put-together Paul Allen who's hacked to great bits in Mary Harron's American Psycho.

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All this after beginning his career as the tortured teen good-bad, Jordan Catalano, in "My So-Called Life," and following that as the title character in Prefontaine, one of two competing projects about the maddeningly spirited long-distance runner who died young.

Is it something sinister within Leto's depths that pulls him to such roles and projects? Not really, says the actor. "It's not a fascination with the dark side, but given the choice, I'd rather work with directors that have a vision, on projects that have something unique to say and that challenge me. Roles [like Harry Goldfarb] are difficult to come by."

Just how challenging was playing Harry? Leto takes a breath and pulls at his semi-bleached, shoulder-length hair that is part of his get-up for his next project--another Fincher movie--The Panic Room. "I can't say Requiem was fun, but [it's a role] I'll never forget. It was like your parachute not opening and then those three or four seconds before you hit the ground. That's where we were hovering the whole time we were shooting."

And what about The Panic Room? Will it mark a lighter place in Leto's young career? Nope. "It's still on the dark side."


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