Jared Leto’s Painful Transformation (Photo Credit – Facebook)
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Jared Leto took method acting to a painful extreme when he gained 67 pounds for the 2007 indie film Chapter 27. The transformation was so drastic that it left him suffering from gout.
“Towards the end of the shoot, one of the glaring issues was the pain I had with my feet,” he admitted in an interview with the LA times. “I had a wheelchair because it was so painful. My body was in shock from the amount of weight I gained. It took about a year to get back to a place that felt semi-normal. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back to the place I was physically.”
Leto had undergone extreme weight loss for Requiem for a Dream and Dallas Buyers Club, but Chapter 27 pushed his body in the opposite direction. He packed on the pounds to portray Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon, aiming to replicate the assassin’s doughy frame. The rapid weight gain took a toll, forcing doctors to recommend Lipitor and leaving him in chronic pain.
“I’m not sure it was the wisest choice,” he reflected during the interview. “A friend of mine was recently going to gain weight for a film, and I did my best to talk him out of it. Just because you can lose the weight doesn’t mean the impact it had on you isn’t there anymore.”
The physical transformation wasn’t just about appearance. Leto believed embodying Chapman’s discomfort and sluggishness was essential to understanding the role. “The script didn’t say, ‘Page 1: You gain 67 pounds, and you’re miserable for two months,’ but as I started to research, I realized that the physical representation of this guy had so much to do with who he was.”
Beyond the weight, Leto altered his voice to match Chapman’s soft-spoken, Southern drawl. He studied interviews and audiotapes recorded by a librarian in Chapman’s hometown, absorbing every detail. “He barely ever speaks above a whisper, and everything is kind of choked off in the throat,” Leto explained to LA Times. “He was, in the strangest way, a very polite, genteel kind of person, and he certainly thought of himself as a gentleman, which is so strange for someone committing such a horrifying and despicable act.”
Leto had a history of pushing his body for roles. In Fight Club, his character’s pretty-boy face was brutally disfigured. In Requiem for a Dream, his arm turned black and purulent. But Chapter 27 was different. The damage lingered.
After Chapter 27, Leto leaned more into his music career with 30 Seconds to Mars. When he returned to acting, he continued his reputation for extreme transformations – this time with prosthetics instead of weight gain. Looking back, Chapter 27 stood as a cautionary tale of dedication taken too far.
“A failure of a human being,” he said of Chapman. “A very sick and disturbed individual. But when you’re an actor playing a part, you don’t play a monster. You have to try to understand the human being there.”
