Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club.
Someone once told me that Jared Leto was a jerk in real life. I don’t remember who it was, probably because I never spoke to them again.
Thankfully, New York magazine’s Jada Yuan has my back, and seems to think he’s very nice indeed. “He is a phenomenally gifted flirt,” Yuan writes in a recent Q&A with the actor/rock star. “Clawing yourself out from under that intense gaze requires recognizing that flirting seems to flow out of Leto unconsciously.”
But Yuan is writing about the actor for a reason. She interviewed Jordan Catalano Jared Leto at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of Dallas Buyers Club, in which he portrays a “gaunt, feisty, drug-addicted, transgender woman with AIDS.” Leto lost 40 pounds for the role, as evidenced by a very scary photo series Terry Richardson shot last year.
In the film, set to come out in November, Leto’s “Rayon” teams up with Matthew McConaughey’s homophobic, HIV-positive cowboy to offer “unregulated coctkails of vitamins, proteins, and smuggled foreign drugs” to AIDS patients in exchange for cash. Rayon cracks Woodruff’s veneer through “sheer undeterred pluck,” Yuan writes.
The trailer suggests standout performances by both Leto and McConaughey. But let’s face it, it’s going to be depressing. Get the tissues ready.
— Rebecca H.
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