Ready for the Oscar club

JARED Leto likes to repeat Andy Warhol’s remark that labels are for cans not people. “It’s more and more common for all of us to do many different things now. And that’s fun, that’s exciting,” he says. “It’s nice that we don’t have to work the same job for 30 or 40 years, get a watch and retire.”

He already leads a double life as an actor, who first caught the eye in TV teen drama My So- Called Life two decades ago, and with rock band Thirty Seconds To Mars. His latest screen role in Dallas Buyers Club offers another view of him – as Rayon, a drug-addicted, HIV-positive transsexual.

The movie – about a homophobic cowboy Roy Woodroof who contracts Aids and opens a business selling unapproved drugs to fellow sufferers – is already a winner on the awards circuit. Expect more gongs at the Oscars, where its six nominations include Leto for best supporting actor and Matthew McConaughey for best actor, as well as best picture.

The actors transformed themselves for the picture, both losing weight and in Leto’s case turning female, and auditioning for director Jean- Marc Vallee in character. “I was in Berlin and a Skype meeting was set up. It wasn’t really an audition, but I knew it was a test, he was feeling me out,” he recalls.

“When we connected I said hello and that’s the last time he ever saw me as me. I put lipstick on, undid a little black jacket to reveal a pink furry sweater pulled over my shoulder and proceeded to basically flirt with him for the next 20 minutes.”

McConaughey, who’s sitting next to Leto at the interview, adds “I didn’t meet Jared until filming was over. I met Rayon each day.”

For him, Dallas Buyers Club, coupled with his cameo in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street, represents a new phase in McConaughey’s career after becoming known for baring his chest in romcoms and action adventures. Not that he sees it as a second chance. “I’m still in the same book, just a different chapter,” he says.

“It’s a new time in my life, I want to re-calibrate what I’m doing in my career right now. I enjoyed what I did before, I enjoyed the past 22 years. I’m not arrogant enough to boo-hoo anything I’ve ever done in this career. I’ve enjoyed it and wouldn’t be sitting here now if I didn’t deal with what I’ve done in the past.

“I made a conscious decision, saying I don’t really feel like doing some of the roles that are similar to what I had done, action adventures and comedies.

“During that impasse, which was a year-and-ahalf to two years, nothing came in that I wanted to do. I gained a little anonymity by being in the shadows. I became a fresh idea for people and those roles found me.”

The Dallas Buyers Club project had been around for more than 15 years before landing on his desk. He remembers reading the script and thinking it worked as good entertainment, even if it was fiction. But it was fact, based on Ron Woodroof’s life and dealing with the subject of HIV at the time it came on the scene in America.

“It had a lot of heart and a lot of meaning, also sad and dramatic in a lot of ways. Here was this guy, this real anarchist, who after being given 30 days to live found a way through the law, round the law, whatever way he could figure out. He found a way to live several more years.

“Nobody really wanted to put up the money to make it. I remember saying that I wanted to do it.

I said to my agent, ‘Make sure I don’t lose it’.

There was a time at the beginning of the year I said, ‘We’re going to make it in the fall’.

“I could tell that myself and the others needed to put that stake in the sand. We didn’t flinch from that, even when the financing fell through five weeks before the start.”

THAT determination carried through into the filming. “When we started rolling everybody had that feeling we were all walking the plank and part of that is the 20 years it took to get it made. Everyone had said no for so long and we’re on our own, and we thought that by hook or by crook let’s not come up short.

Everyone had that feeling,” adds McConaughey.

He got to read Woodroof’s diaries – “his dialogue with himself” – as part of his research. “It was as much as what was between the lines. He was kind of drifting and what it revealed to me was this guy found singular purpose and drive and identity, and something to fight for, when he got HIV.”

Weight loss wasn’t the main thing for him. “The amount of energy I lost from the neck down I gained from the neck up, which is where generally Ron is coming from. In the film I had plenty of energy. We did it in 25 days. We were in a bubble until someone came up and said relax.”

Leto has had a good response from the transgender and gay community to his performance.

“They were incredibly kind and supportive and generous with their time and energy, and kind of showed me the ropes,” he says.

“People are happy to pass on information.

What it’s like to tell your parents who you really are, what it’s like to try to be more feminine, some of the mistakes you may make as a newcomer.

People knew we had the right intentions and that we tried our very best.”

AUDIENCES tend to gasp with shock when an ill-looking, thin McConaughey and a transgender Leto first appear on screen. Leto admits he hasn’t seen the film yet.

“I saw a piece of the trailer the other day, when I was doing an interview at the radio station. I couldn’t hear it. I said, ‘What is that? It looks kind of interesting’. I wasn’t in it much so I didn’t have that moment of panic where I saw myself,”

says Leto.

McConaughey’s first thought on seeing himself as a gaunt Ron Woodroof was that he looked like a reptile. “But I watched this guy and was able to take the ride. I was not reminded it was myself playing Ron Woodroof. There’s no guarantee when I’m in a film that’s going to happen,”

he says.

His co-star is reluctant to watch himself on screen. “If I was directing, and in the editing room, but if I don’t have any control over that process. It would probably be excruciating for me to just sit back as a self-confessed control freak,” explains Leto.

Both actors have already collected awards for their performances. Leto’s tally is 30-plus awards. “So they say. I didn’t know there were 30 awards to win,” he says. “It’s slightly embarrassing.

It’s incredible and pretty wild.”

The ones McConaughey has accepted so far are on display at home. He says. “We have a big bar in the house, and the kids like to check them out and ask me questions about each one.

There’s a different story with each.”

Leto is unclear what’s happened to the awards he’s been handed. “They probably sit where you leave them,” he says. “One of my favourite things I’ve ever gotten is that Thirty Seconds To Mars broke the Guinness world record for the longest tour. I have that in my guest bathroom, right above the toilet, which I think is a good place.

“That was a good one. The guys showed up at the show – we’d played 309 shows in one cycle – and made this presentation. That was a really fun one to get.”

􀁧 Dallas Buyers Club (15) is now showing in cinemas