His gifts to his other co-stars were just as impressive

Jun 27, 2015 07:27 GMT  ·  By

When Warner Bros. cast Jared Leto in the role of The Joker in the upcoming “Suicide Squad,” directed by David Ayer, they knew he was one of the few actors who could do justice to the role after Heath Ledger’s flawless performance in “The Dark Knight.” They also had a guarantee that he would spare no effort in getting inside the skin of the character.

And that he’s done, his co-star Adam Beach (he plays Slipnot) tells E! Online in a new interview. Even before he got to meet the rest of the cast, which includes Will Smith, Margo Robbie, Jai Courtney, Viola Davis and Joel Kinnaman, he was already living in character.

Jared Leto is “quite the gift giver”

Jared Leto is famous for being a Method actor and for not breaking character even between takes. Basically, the time other actors take to prepare for the character, he actually lives like said character would, if it were real.

Before and after shooting, Jared disappears and is replaced by whatever character he’s playing, to put it simply.

That means that he’s not the nicest person to be around right now, since he’s working on The Joker, only one of the most famous and insane villains in the DC Comics universe. He made an impression with his co-stars from the start, by sending them handwritten letters and personalized gifts when they had already started shooting but he was weeks from being scheduled on set.

Margot Robbie, who plays his lover Harley Quinn, got a live rat in the mail. This might sound gross, but Beach insists it was actually a sweet gesture on Jared’s behalf.   

“He sent [Margot Robbie] a nice love letter with a black box with a rat in it - a live rat,” he says. “It was beautiful. Then he sent bullets to Will [Smith] with a letter. Basically, what he said was, ‘Guys, I can’t be there but I want you to know I’m doing my work as hard as you guys.’ The video he showed is in character. It blew our minds away. Then we realized that day, this is real.”

Leto also included a video of himself and another present, for the entire cast, a dead hog.

The surprises didn’t end here, Beach says: when he finally showed up on set, he was even more shocking than he’d appeared in the video. One moment he was sweet, bearing some resemblance to the Jared they had heard of, and the next he was displaying “psychotic behavior where you’re in fear.”

Initial feedback to “Suicide Squad” has been underwhelming 

Obviously, Beach has nothing but respect for Leto’s art, and considering his previous work (“Dallas Buyers Club,” “Requiem for a Dream”), it’s not misplaced.

However, the direction in which Warners is taking The Joker and their entire planned Justice League universe isn’t one that fans believe to be right. Initial feedback to “Suicide Squad” and its predecessor “Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” which comes out months before it in 2016, has been tepid at best.

The Joker caused serious waves online when it was first revealed to the public in the official portrait (above), because he seems so out there he’s almost like a caricature of what the comic book character was. The tattoos (including the “Deranged” one on his forehead) didn’t help with this perception.

What we’re saying is that it will take more than just a few rats-in-the-mail / “he’s so Method it hurts” stories to get fans on board with this project.