Over the years, Leto’s penchant for method acting has grown to be the thing that people hate the most—but there are plenty of other reasons, too. 30 Seconds to Mars—the multi-million-selling band he fronts alongside his brother Shannon—inspires devotion and derision in equal measure, and then there are the queasy rumours of impropriety with young fans that have cropped up over the years.

Ultimately, Leto takes himself and his work pretty seriously, and that’s rubbed a ton of people the wrong way. Here are five times he was so self-serious that he didn’t know he was actually the butt of the joke.

Five times Jared Leto didn’t realise he was the butt of the joke:

When he went full method as the Joker

It’s pretty easy to trace most of the modern “Jared Leto is a method-acting jerk” sentiment back to his ill-fated turn as the Joker in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. Critics eviscerated that 2016 supervillain extravaganza, and even though it made bank at the box office, it’s now seen as a black mark on the careers of everyone involved. Not least, Leto, who decided that he needed to fully embrace the madness of the Clown Prince of Crime for a throwaway superhero film he barely had any screen time in.

During the film’s press tour, a host of stories emerged, including Will Smith’s assertion that he never met Leto—just the Joker. Margot Robbie claimed he sent her an inappropriate love letter and a rat, which she kept as a pet. Viola Davis claimed he brought a dead pig to set, which she was decidedly unamused by, telling Vanity Fair, “He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts.”

In truth, Leto’s reasoning that “The Joker is somebody who doesn’t really respect things like personal space or boundaries” makes some twisted sense. There’s also every chance all this stuff was blown out of proportion because they thought it would help sell the film. Instead, it did the opposite, painting Leto as a weirdo who took his role as a comic book character way too seriously. For his part, Leto has denied most of the more outlandish stories and said he just gave a few joke gifts to his castmates as a laugh.

When he scaled the outside of a German hotel for no reason

Leto is an avid climber, first becoming interested in the death-defying past in 2015. You see, he was directing a documentary series called Great Wide Open, which explored five of America’s National Parks in all their glory. The urge to climb some of these parks’ rockfaces consumed him, though, and he began taking lessons from professional climbers like Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold.

You don’t want to know what interests Leto about climbing, though—you just want to know why the oddball 51-year-old pixie-man decided it was a good idea to scale the outside of a Berlin hotel in 2023 without a safety harness.

Indeed, while some observers believed Leto was filming material with YouTuber Younes Zarou – known for illusions and stunts – it was never confirmed why he was climbing the building. Maybe he wanted to climb toward the heavens and feel the wind flowing through his long locks. Maybe he just wanted to see if he could do it, and then people started filming it because they were like, “Isn’t that the guy from that band I hate?”

When he gave himself gout while playing John Lennon’s killer

If you thought Leto’s method-acting antics began with the Joker or Dallas Buyer’s Club, you couldn’t be more wrong. He was starving himself, abstaining from sex, and living on the street as far back as 2000’s Requiem for a Dream. Hell, when it came time to play Mark David Chapman – the disturbed man who murdered John Lennon – in Chapter 27, he gained a gut-busting 62 pounds and gave himself gout in the process.

To start piling on the pounds, Leto did what most actors do – he stuffed himself with pizza, burgers, and pasta. Then he got creative, melting pints of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, which he mixed with soy sauce and olive oil for maximum calories. It sounds like an absolutely horrific thing to drink – but the muse was calling him, so he had to answer. In the end, all the effort didn’t seem worth it when the movie sank without a trace at the box office, reviews were middling at best, and most people made fun of him going to such extreme lengths. Plus, as we mentioned, there was the gout, which left him wheelchair-bound.

In 2014, Leto admitted, “Really, it’s a stupid thing to do. I got gout, and my cholesterol went up so fast in such a short time that my doctors wanted to put me on Lipitor, which is for much, much older people.” Oh well. You live and learn, right?

When he tried to play along with the Morbius meme

If you were on the internet in April 2022, you will be all too familiar with the phrase “It’s Morbin’ Time.” All poor Leto wanted to do was play Dr Michael Morbius, a scientist famous for his pioneering research in the field of artificial blood, who then becomes a Living Vampire…or something. The next thing he knows, his movie tanks at the box office, and anyone who did see it starts mercilessly making fun of him on the internet. Soon, “Morbin’ Time” becomes a viral meme, and people start saying it made “morbillion” dollars, while claiming that Morbius fever is sweeping the nation.

It would have been enough to make any self-respecting star go to ground for a while until the heat died down – but not Jared Leto. When he posted a clip of him reading a script entitled Morbius 2: It’s Morbin’ Time, followed by the iconic Curb Your Enthusiasm theme to show he was in on the joke, he probably expected people to praise him for taking the piss out of himself. Naturally, because this is Jared Leto, that didn’t happen. Instead, he was accused of being the least self-aware actor around, and people began worrying that the studio may be dumb enough to greenlight a sequel, thinking the buzz around the film actually meant people liked it.

When he became a full-on cult leader on a Croatian island

In 2019, the official 30 Seconds to Mars Twitter account published a series of photographs. They showed a white-robed Leto walking with a flock of similarly white-robed followers, then pictures of him looking an awful lot like Jesus while performing with the band to these adoring folks. The hashtag “#MarsIsland” accompanied the pictures—and people went nuts. “Wait just a darn minute,” they thought. “Has Jared Leto started a cult?” The answer, in a way, was “Yes.” After all, Leto himself posted a caption that read, “Yes, this is a cult.”

You see, Mars Island is a three-day retreat on the private Croatian island of Obonjan, and Leto charged fans of his band – known as the “Echelon” – between $1649 and $7149 for the privilege of attending with their heroes. According to the band’s official website, these fans could, “Rest and regain strength with yoga among the trees, jump into the Adriatic Sea, watch a midnight movie or watch the stars, and catch two intimate performances by the band 30 Seconds to Mars.”

Die-hard fans of the band – of which, to be fair, there are many – would have been green with envy toward those who found a way to Mars Island. To the legions of people who don’t drink Leto’s Kool-Aid, though, it was just another thing to add to the never-ending pile of self-aggrandising nonsense that makes him the butt of the joke.

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