Latest news with #Jesus-like
The Age
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘Predatory, terrifying and unacceptable': The accusations faced by Jared Leto
Even before these latest accusations, there were question marks around the now 53-year-old actor. In 2018, Disney actor Dylan Spouse tagged Jared Leto in a tweet and said: 'Yo @JaredLeto now that you've slid into the dm's of every female model aged 18 - 25, what would you say your success rate is.' In a deleted post, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn added, 'he starts at 18 on the internet?' Leto appears not to have taken Gunn's shade to heart. Twelve months later, in 2019, he was photographed in Croatia, modelling white robes and a Jesus-like beard, surrounded by fans of 30 Seconds To Mars (where his brother Shannon plays drums). They had accompanied him to Central Europe for the latest in a series of 'summer camps', where activities include yoga, cooking classes and – well, there's always a downside – a 30 Seconds To Mars performance. Dressing up was part of the fun at these events – and Leto was the trend-setter with his Christ-like outfit (the camps were discontinued after the pandemic). Just so nobody missed what he was going for, the band's social media wrote: 'Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.' Self-styled cult leader Leto may have styled himself as the head of a cult, but his childhood reads closer to a Southern Gothic novel. He was born in impoverished Bossier City, Louisiana, where the major local industry was a trio of riverside casinos. His father, Tony Bryant, abandoned the family when he was an infant. Leto recalled his father's last words as, 'I'll see you, kid, just going to the store to get a carton of milk'. Bryant died when Leto was eight. His mother Constance had by then moved back in with her parents. She later married Carl Leto, Jared's adoptive father. However, there was little stability in Leto's life. By 16, he was taking drugs and paying for his habit with theft. 'There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good,' he would say. He turned himself around, though, and, aged 22, had his big break as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama My So Called Life. 'He went full Joker' It's probably as well Leto and his 30 Seconds To Mars 'Echelon' – as fans call themselves – have a strong bond. Cinema has proven to be a less supportive environment. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyer's Club. However, his campaign to carve out a space in blockbusters came unstuck with his disastrous turn in David Ayer's Suicide Squad in 2016. The problem wasn't Leto on screen – he was perfectly fine as a sleazy Joker (he returned to the character in a new scene filmed for Zack Snyder's four-hour Justice League). The issue was his behaviour off-camera and rumours he had gone too far trying to freak out other cast members. 'He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts,' said Suicide Squad star Viola Davis. 'He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto.' Along with the pigs, Leto was said to have sent used condoms, dead rats and pornographic magazines. Even Will Smith – an actor whom we can now safely say is no stranger to controversy – was weirded out. 'First we found out that Jared wasn't going to be in rehearsals,' said Smith, who played Deadshot. 'And we were like, 'That's messed up! How is he not going to be in rehearsals?' And then there was a bang on the door, and this dude barges in and throws a dead pig on the floor in front of us. We're like, 'OK. Jared has officially set off the Suicide Squad. He went full Joker'.' Going 'full Joker' was nothing new. Throughout his career, he has taken method acting to extremes. In preparation for 2022's superhero film Morbius, Leto met 'doctors and patients who could teach him about living with a rare, incurable blood disease'. To walk with a cane – as Morbius does in the film – he 'studied with real cane users'. 'I remember fearing for this guy's spine,' said co-star Adria Arjona. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple' He'd taken things ever further, appearing opposite Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's House Of Gucci. 'I did it all,' Leto told i-D magazine. 'I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce'. In Blade Runner 2049, in which he played a villainous and blind tech evangelist, he wore special contact lenses that dramatically reduced his vision. 'He was walking with an assistant, very slowly,' director Dennis Villeneuve told the Wall Street Journal. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe.' Most drastic of all was Dallas Buyer's Club, for which he shed weight by eating nothing but cucumbers. 'I stayed in character the entire shoot. I couldn't imagine doing it another way. I'd gone too far to pick it up and drop it off,' he informed the Guardian. 'I lost around 40lb [almost three stone/18kg] and then I stopped counting. For me, it was about how it made me feel, how it made other people treat me. I got down to something like 114lb [about eight stone], and that was enough to do what I wanted it to do, which was to change everything about me.' He was widely acclaimed for Dallas Buyers Club. Suicide Squad, however, was a mess, and Leto's scenes were cut significantly. He would later deny the grisliest of the rumours and was reportedly outraged when Warner Bros announced it was pivoting to a Joker origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips (for which Phoenix would win an Oscar). 'Leto's frustration that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle,' according to a 2019 article in the Hollywood Reporter. 'According to sources familiar with Leto's behaviour, when he learnt of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners's parent company.' Uncertain future And then came his Citizen Kane of terrible films, the Venom spin-off Morbius, in which Leto played a moody vampire – a role described by the Telegraph at the time as a 'cross between Russell Brand and a Barbary macaque'. He went on to star opposite Anne Hathaway in We Crashed, Apple TV+'s underwhelming chronicling of the rise and fall of the We Work startup (ironically – or perhaps appropriately – Leto has reportedly made a $US90 million fortune from early investments in tech companies such as Airbnb and Uber). He has since gone back on the road with 30 Seconds To Mars, albeit with diminishing returns. London's O2 was half empty when the band played there last year – though an ongoing tour of Europe this summer is sold out. But it was on the big screen that his attentions were focused, with Tron: Ares to have been followed by a big screen reboot of Masters of the Universe, with Leto playing sarcastic mega-villain Skeletor. As with so much else in Leto's career, the commercial prospects of these projects are now uncertain. In the case of Tron: Ares it is too late for Disney to flip the ejector switch. The project is essentially done and dusted and Disney has already put out a series of trailers – top heavy with Tron's familiar whizz-bang 'light cycles', along with footage of Leto's co-stars Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges (returning from the original). 'Ready?' says Bridges in the latest promo. 'There's no going back'. Disney may come to regret that line.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Predatory, terrifying and unacceptable': The accusations faced by Jared Leto
Even before these latest accusations, there were question marks around the now 53-year-old actor. In 2018, Disney actor Dylan Spouse tagged Jared Leto in a tweet and said: 'Yo @JaredLeto now that you've slid into the dm's of every female model aged 18 - 25, what would you say your success rate is.' In a deleted post, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn added, 'he starts at 18 on the internet?' Leto appears not to have taken Gunn's shade to heart. Twelve months later, in 2019, he was photographed in Croatia, modelling white robes and a Jesus-like beard, surrounded by fans of 30 Seconds To Mars (where his brother Shannon plays drums). They had accompanied him to Central Europe for the latest in a series of 'summer camps', where activities include yoga, cooking classes and – well, there's always a downside – a 30 Seconds To Mars performance. Dressing up was part of the fun at these events – and Leto was the trend-setter with his Christ-like outfit (the camps were discontinued after the pandemic). Just so nobody missed what he was going for, the band's social media wrote: 'Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.' Self-styled cult leader Leto may have styled himself as the head of a cult, but his childhood reads closer to a Southern Gothic novel. He was born in impoverished Bossier City, Louisiana, where the major local industry was a trio of riverside casinos. His father, Tony Bryant, abandoned the family when he was an infant. Leto recalled his father's last words as, 'I'll see you, kid, just going to the store to get a carton of milk'. Bryant died when Leto was eight. His mother Constance had by then moved back in with her parents. She later married Carl Leto, Jared's adoptive father. However, there was little stability in Leto's life. By 16, he was taking drugs and paying for his habit with theft. 'There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good,' he would say. He turned himself around, though, and, aged 22, had his big break as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama My So Called Life. 'He went full Joker' It's probably as well Leto and his 30 Seconds To Mars 'Echelon' – as fans call themselves – have a strong bond. Cinema has proven to be a less supportive environment. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyer's Club. However, his campaign to carve out a space in blockbusters came unstuck with his disastrous turn in David Ayer's Suicide Squad in 2016. The problem wasn't Leto on screen – he was perfectly fine as a sleazy Joker (he returned to the character in a new scene filmed for Zack Snyder's four-hour Justice League). The issue was his behaviour off-camera and rumours he had gone too far trying to freak out other cast members. 'He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts,' said Suicide Squad star Viola Davis. 'He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto.' Along with the pigs, Leto was said to have sent used condoms, dead rats and pornographic magazines. Even Will Smith – an actor whom we can now safely say is no stranger to controversy – was weirded out. 'First we found out that Jared wasn't going to be in rehearsals,' said Smith, who played Deadshot. 'And we were like, 'That's messed up! How is he not going to be in rehearsals?' And then there was a bang on the door, and this dude barges in and throws a dead pig on the floor in front of us. We're like, 'OK. Jared has officially set off the Suicide Squad. He went full Joker'.' Going 'full Joker' was nothing new. Throughout his career, he has taken method acting to extremes. In preparation for 2022's superhero film Morbius, Leto met 'doctors and patients who could teach him about living with a rare, incurable blood disease'. To walk with a cane – as Morbius does in the film – he 'studied with real cane users'. 'I remember fearing for this guy's spine,' said co-star Adria Arjona. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple' He'd taken things ever further, appearing opposite Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's House Of Gucci. 'I did it all,' Leto told i-D magazine. 'I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce'. In Blade Runner 2049, in which he played a villainous and blind tech evangelist, he wore special contact lenses that dramatically reduced his vision. 'He was walking with an assistant, very slowly,' director Dennis Villeneuve told the Wall Street Journal. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe.' Most drastic of all was Dallas Buyer's Club, for which he shed weight by eating nothing but cucumbers. 'I stayed in character the entire shoot. I couldn't imagine doing it another way. I'd gone too far to pick it up and drop it off,' he informed the Guardian. 'I lost around 40lb [almost three stone/18kg] and then I stopped counting. For me, it was about how it made me feel, how it made other people treat me. I got down to something like 114lb [about eight stone], and that was enough to do what I wanted it to do, which was to change everything about me.' He was widely acclaimed for Dallas Buyers Club. Suicide Squad, however, was a mess, and Leto's scenes were cut significantly. He would later deny the grisliest of the rumours and was reportedly outraged when Warner Bros announced it was pivoting to a Joker origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips (for which Phoenix would win an Oscar). 'Leto's frustration that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle,' according to a 2019 article in the Hollywood Reporter. 'According to sources familiar with Leto's behaviour, when he learnt of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners's parent company.' Uncertain future And then came his Citizen Kane of terrible films, the Venom spin-off Morbius, in which Leto played a moody vampire – a role described by the Telegraph at the time as a 'cross between Russell Brand and a Barbary macaque'. He went on to star opposite Anne Hathaway in We Crashed, Apple TV+'s underwhelming chronicling of the rise and fall of the We Work startup (ironically – or perhaps appropriately – Leto has reportedly made a $US90 million fortune from early investments in tech companies such as Airbnb and Uber). He has since gone back on the road with 30 Seconds To Mars, albeit with diminishing returns. London's O2 was half empty when the band played there last year – though an ongoing tour of Europe this summer is sold out. But it was on the big screen that his attentions were focused, with Tron: Ares to have been followed by a big screen reboot of Masters of the Universe, with Leto playing sarcastic mega-villain Skeletor. As with so much else in Leto's career, the commercial prospects of these projects are now uncertain. In the case of Tron: Ares it is too late for Disney to flip the ejector switch. The project is essentially done and dusted and Disney has already put out a series of trailers – top heavy with Tron's familiar whizz-bang 'light cycles', along with footage of Leto's co-stars Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges (returning from the original). 'Ready?' says Bridges in the latest promo. 'There's no going back'. Disney may come to regret that line.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Easter offers an extremely relevant anti-tyrannical political message
For Christians, Easter is ultimately about the empty tomb and its promise of resurrection. But before the resurrection, there was the cross, which was widely views as a symbol of a terrifying system of imperial tyranny, a frequent instrument for executions during the Roman empire. Setting aside the miracles and the metaphysics, Easter offers an anti-tyrannical political message. The Easter narrative warns against the dangers of greed, complicity and despotic power. It condemns the collusion of sycophants and the callous brutality of the mob. The story of Jesus' execution exposes an entire system of unjust imperial rule over a subjugated people. Opinion One of the villains of Easter is Judas, a money-grubbing thief who betrayed Jesus to the authorities. Another villain is Herod Antipas, who was also responsible for beheading John the Baptist. But it was Pontius Pilate, the authoritarian Roman ruler of Judaea, who conducted the trial of Jesus and was legally responsible for his crucifixion. That trial involved a bizarre ritual in which the mob was asked who it wanted to save. The mob cried out for Jesus to be crucified, while calling for the release of Barabbas, an insurrectionist. All of this teaches a lesson about the need for a rules-based system of justice. Such a system would outlaw cruel punishments, such as scourging and crucifixion. It would prevent authoritarian rulers from consolidating the power to convict and punish. It would not defer to the stupid passions of the mob, nor would it depend upon the greed of paid informants. In general, it would avoid the excesses of swift imperial justice in favor of due process and the rule of law. Such a system would be similar to that which is found in our own beleaguered constitutional system. The American Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, speech and the press, along with the right to assemble and petition. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, requires due process of law and stipulates that those accused of crimes should be able to confront the witnesses against them. It also prohibits excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments. This means that if a Jesus-like figure were to appear on the American scene, he would be free to preach and lead a movement, even if it infuriated religious and legal authorities. His followers would be free to protest, write and criticize the policies of the church and the state. And if this figure or his followers were accused of crimes, they would have basic rights that protect them against arbitrary detention. In our system, prisoners cannot be mocked or manhandled, or cruelly killed. None of this was true in ancient Roman Judaea. The Roman authorities ruled with an iron fist. Crucifixion was intended to send a message to rebels and rabble-rousers. And while some of the locals may have thought that they could play along with imperial power, the Romans eventually destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. They also rounded up and killed Peter and Paul, and other Christians. The American founders understood the dangers of imperial power run amok. In 1775, John Adams claimed that a republic was 'a government of laws, and not of men.' He further said, 'An empire is a despotism, and an emperor a despot, bound by no law or limitation, but his own will.' Soon enough, in 1776, the Americans broke with England, claiming that the king had become tyrannical and despotic. The arbitrary and authoritarian application of the power to punish was viewed as a sure sign of tyranny. Among the complaints against King George listed in the Declaration of Independence are depriving people of 'the benefits of trial by jury,' and 'transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.' Unfortunately, our own government is now transporting people to foreign countries without due process. We are also threatening to occupy Greenland and annex Canada. Easter provides a cautionary tale for the present moment. It reminds us of the need for due process and the rule of law, and about the dangers of imperial excess. The Easter narrative also calls for sympathy for the victims of unjust power. If it seems that we are more Roman than Christian these days, it can help to recall that the hero of Easter is Jesus and not Pontius Pilate. Andrew Fiala is the interim department chair of Fresno State University's Department of Philosophy.
