Jared Leto Biography

Jared Leto won the Academy Award as best supporting actor in 2014 for his role in Dallas Buyers Club.

A native of Louisiana, Jared Leto began working in television in the early 1990s. He got his start playing Jordan on TV’s My So-Called Life (1994-95, starring Claire Danes), the short-lived teen angst series that was a major hit with critics. The series helped push him into the spotlight, and he seemed to make a career of playing small roles in talked-about movies: The Thin Red Line (1998, with Jim Caviezel); Fight Club (1999, with Brad Pitt); Girl, Interrupted (1999, with Winona Ryder); American Psycho (2000, starring Christian Bale); Panic Room (2002, starring Jodie Foster); Alexander (2004, with Colin Farrell; and Lord of War (2005, with Nicolas Cage).

Leto has also been an occasional lead player and was the star of 1997’s Prefontaine and 1998’s Urban Legend (with Alicia Witt). He famously lost several pounds to play a drug addict in Requiem for a Dream (2000, with Ellen Burstyn), and famously gained nearly 60 pounds to play killer Mark David Chapman in the movie Chapter 27 (2007). And in 2013 he starred as a transgender AIDS victim in the film Dallas Buyers Club, winning the Oscar along the way.

Since 1998, Jared Leto has also been the guitarist and singer for the rock band 30 Seconds to Mars, whose second album featured the MTV hit “The Kill,” released in 2005 and promoted through all of 2007.