Jared Leto offered a scary preview of him as the Joker with a shared photo on Instagram on Tuesday. He had all the Joker custom, from the green hair, red lips and fully tattooed body for his role in the upcoming movie Suicide Squad.
The shared photo was taken on the film set, although from any known exact location that could offer some clues to the story. Leto has been covering the news lately with his dominant role and his attempts to get into character, as reported by the Telegraph. According to Entertainment, the actor sent used condoms and anal beads to his co-stars Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, among others, to get into the frame of mind of the Joker.
Exploiting the fear
Margot Robbie, Harley Quinn in David Ayer’s movie, admitted at some point had worried Leto might “beat her up on set” after hearing about his unconventional methods for acting as the Joker, as reported by the Independent.
Robbie commented that the abusive relationship the Joker and Harley Quinn had left her worried. When she first heard about his ‘submersion’ method and that they could not refer to him as Jared and things like that, she started to panic. Margot Robbie’s concern was more than reasonable considering Harley Quinn is in a rather strange relationship with the guy in the movie, she said.
Fortunately for Robbie, Leto was “really lovely” and far from abusive to Robbie, who ended up relaxed to find the actor respectful, professional and “incredible to watch,” the 26-year-old actress said.
“He is very conscientious on set,” Robbie told the Independent. “He is not completely lost in the character that he is violent or anything. Between every take he asks if I was okay,” the actress added.
A creative but demanding lead role for Leto to fit in
Leto is not the first Joker to be creative with his role, Jack Nicholson was a Batman fan since his childhood and used to believe he was born to play the Joker. Nicholson used to spend hours each day contorting his face to maintain the rictus grin, to the point of giving himself cramps. Heath Ledger, the next Joker, at first was highly criticized due to people often thought he looked too young and too cute actually to threaten Christian Bale’s Batman. However, he presented an unpredictable character who win over everyone later.
Ledger’s Joker was described as a “schizophrenic with zero empathy”, someone with a twisted sense of humor and who is delighted in his cleverness and at the expense of the others. To get into character, Ledger isolated himself from friends and family by spending an entire month locked in a hotel room.
Within his loneliness, he tried to find an exact posture for his character and a unique voice that did not make any reference to Nicholson’s performance. The actor wrote as well diaries as his unique character full of cruel things that the real Joker would find funny. He refined his worldview and outlook, taking elements from Sid Vicious and A Clockwork Orange in addition to the comics.
The Joker had some consequences in the actor, Ledger’s insomnia had been worsened due to the unconventional characterization. The star eventually moved on to other work after finishing the film but died after a short time from an accidental overdose of a prescription drug.
Psychological preparation
Suicide Squad’s director, David Ayer, thought out of the box for the movie adaptation, and just as Leto, he included some of the members of the cast. The director insisted that the cast participates in a group therapy sessions where they could open up and share some personal vulnerabilities among each other.
After the therapy session and while on the movie set, Ayer would use some of the information shared in the group session to motivate the actors and create elicit spontaneous and unhinged performances from them.
“It was a pretty vulnerable place to go,” Robbie told Entertainment Weekly about the sessions. “He wants to know about your personal history and your relationships and your childhood, things like that that you do not really want to tell a stranger. And then you have to share that with the rest of your squad as well. I really did not like that.”
Source: The Telegraph