So far, the strangest thing we’ve heard about Jared Leto’s performance in upcoming Sony blockbuster Morbius is that it marks one of the very few times he’s ever used his natural accent in a movie, which is positively mild by the actor’s typical standards for getting a little too into character.
Whether he’s wearing contact lenses that almost completely blinded him in Blade Runner 2049, exiling himself from the rest of the Suicide Squad cast and sending them unsettling gifts, putting on so much weight to play John Lennon’s killer that he put himself in a wheelchair or just generally doing Jared Leto things, the Academy Award winner is nothing if not dedicated to the cause.
His latest performance in House of Gucci is proving just as polarizing as the film itself, with no less an authority than Tom Ford comparing some of Leto’s scenes to a Saturday Night Live skit. Speaking to Total Film, director Ridley Scott defended the 49 year-old from his detractors.
“Jared Leto, there’s not a lot of information about [his character] Paolo, but there are pictures of Paolo and that’s exactly what Paolo looks like. We found the pictures and Jared did what he did and dressed the way Paolo dressed. There’s not a lot of Paolo on camera talking. And so that had to be, to a certain extent, imagined, but clearly Paolo was a very colorful and flamboyant man. The flamboyance of Paolo was quite nicely captured… And how could that be offensive? We paid attention to not getting too overt if we can avoid it.”
The slender and handsome Jared Leto, who boasts a wonderfully luscious head of hair, hardly jumped out as the ideal person to play the stout, balding, and mustachioed Paolo Gucci, but despite some praise, his turn in House of Gucci is still coming under fire in some quarters for being nothing more than stunt casting.