14 DAY TRIAL // Jared Leto has long proved that he’s more than just a pretty face: an established actor and a popular rocker with his band 30 Seconds to Mars, Leto is also doing his best to leave his mark on the industry by making a name for himself as an artist.
It’s quite an ambitious task that he’s set for himself but, as he explains in the December issue of Details magazine, he’s not afraid of failure because he doesn’t really care about what detractors have to say.
Take, for instance, what people said when he first started touring with 30 Seconds, where critics would advise him to stick to his day job and not give up acting.
As he sees it, being a musician is more about being yourself than acting is, which is why he seems to prefer it to the latter.
“As a musician, it’s about revealing more of who you really are. I’m not handed a script with dialogue; there’s no cinematographer or editor. I’m not so interested in creating a persona,” Leto says for Details.
“There have been shows where I’ve been very plain and shows where I’ve worn a dress. I’ve got a skirt on right now. I was in Japan and all the busboys were wearing them,” he adds.
Speaking of wearing skirts, it’s clear that Leto is experimenting: not to create an alterego that he can later sell to the fans, but depending on how he feels he should express himself artistically at a given point.
“I walked down Madison Avenue in a spaghetti-strap tank top and black-fringe wig, and I thought that I would pass with flying colors, but I didn’t. My shoulders were too big. My jaw was too big,” he says.
He wasn’t looking to shock – he just wanted to see if he could be anything else than Jared Leto for a brief instant.
“I was just trying to disappear. It wasn’t like I was getting in touch with my inner transvestite, which I’m sure is inside of us all somewhere,” the star says.
Kanye West is an artist like himself: he’s trying to be creative, to make himself into art even at the risk of enraging millions of people. As Leto puts it, one will never be able to make everybody happy – so why try in the first place.
“I see Kanye as a fellow artist. I think there’s a connection there, but I don’t think it’s about feeling persecuted. It doesn’t matter if you’re President Barack Obama or Bono or the Pope – there’s someone out there who wants to [sleep with] you and someone who wants to kill you,” Leto says.
For the full Details piece with Jared Leto, please refer here.