Jared Leto
Appearances
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Exactly. Sometimes it could be 50 feet. It could be two feet. It really depends on the situation. But Alex was ahead of me, and he was placing the gear. I took a fall. I swung out over the 600-foot abyss. And as I was swinging, I felt the rope go pop, pop, pop, pop. No way. And I looked up and I could see it starting to get core shot at the top. I saw the white innards of the rope pop out.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And I knew in those few seconds, milliseconds maybe, that I was probably going to die. And if I didn't grab a hold of the wall when I swung back in, that was it. So I swung back into the wall and I went to grab it at the last minute. Oh, I lost it, and I swung out again, and I yelled, lower me, to Alex. And fortunately, he heard me.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
It was a very windy day, and he was about 100 feet above me on top of this mountain because he couldn't see me. I was on the overhang. And as I said, yell, lower me, he lowered. So the next time that the rope got cut, it was in a different spot. And that time, I managed to make it on the wall. And he figured out how to get down because he's superhuman.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And we had to cut the rope and kind of negotiate our way down the mountain. Holy shit.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
At the end of it, Alex was like, you want to do it again? I was like, you're out of your fucking mind.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Well, I mean, I appreciate it, but I think you guys do that all the time. I mean, some of the scariest stuff. It's different. You know what can scare me more than a lot of things is having to speak in front of a lot of people.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And it's bizarre because I'm on stage most nights of the week as you are as well. And, you know, even this is a public stage. It's, you know, so that can always, you know, when you're just up there and it's you and your words, that can be a little intimidating, but... I don't know. I think, you know, there's an inevitability. Like when I'm on tour, you have to go on stage.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And the weird thing about being, maybe you guys have felt this as well, I feel more comfortable on stage than I do sitting here talking to you or I would talking to a person at dinner. Like, I feel once the show is done... Because that's a character, maybe? No, no, no, no, no. As the lead man? No, no, no. Music is... Being on stage is the total opposite. It's the revelation of oneself.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I have acoustic guitar. I'm sitting there in the middle of an arena or somewhere and it just feels... Terrifying. No, it feels absolutely amazing. It's so comfortable. It's so, I'm totally at peace and it's a magical thing.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
By the way, we're all this similar ages and, you know, I have to say I was talking to my brother and, you know, my brother's a massive fan of the show. I know your brother a little bit. I have a listener. He's been telling me from the very beginning, you got to listen to this show. You got to listen. Texting me all the time. I'm like, God, this happened on the show.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Oh, nice. He's a great guy. He's the best. He's a great guy. For people that don't know that are listening, he's the better half of 30 Seconds to Mars. We've been doing the band together since we were kids. So cool. That's so great. You know, to be 52 at this point, And to be on the road with your brother.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
There's not a night that goes by where I don't look at him and just share a moment of gratitude how lucky we are. I want to come back to that.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
I'm of the thinking that I actually don't have anything special to offer. I really believe that everyone could basically do anything that I do anytime they want to. It's a matter of... A little bit of faith and a lot of hard work. That's how I look at it. I think everybody could.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And the people around you, too, you know? Right. The people around you, that's a big driver for me is to kind of make sure I don't let anyone down, whether I'm working on a film or I'm on stage. And, you know, the great thing that I found out about being on tour and being on stage is, like, I'm not there for me.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
I'm there for the audience and for my brother, and I am in service every night to make sure the person that...
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
uh worked their ass off to buy a concert ticket which aren't cheap these days by the way has a night that they're never going to forget yeah and i'm i'm in search of that yeah every night all night and that's a lucky place it's interesting you say that and i think it's i also i also have a similar thought process which is that there are a thousand people who can do what i do and um i think about it all the time and it might be a
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
No, I think it's all of the above. And I don't carry that with me as a burden. I kind of, for me, that's fuel for the fire. And I don't know, maybe you guys feel this way too, but when I'm on set, I feel like it's my job to, try and be one of the hardest working people on the set. It's my job to absolutely deliver every single time that I come to set.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Of course you're gonna fail, but that's the goal. To be over-prepared to know my lines, to know your lines, to have a thousand ideas to bring to the table and to really just to die for it. And to also try to be the kindest person that I can be every single day and to be supportive and be a good partner. Like those are the simple things that kind of continue to get me through it.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, that's very well said. I think preparation is definitely a confidence builder. And sometimes if I haven't been on tour for a long time, I'm like, we have a huge show and... There's a ton of people out there, and I'm like, oh, my God, what do I do? And then you get out there, and your body remembers.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
My mom. My mom was and is a great teacher. You know, she's... In a large part, I dedicated my Oscar speech to my mother. And I had an opportunity. I always think, like... By the way, I never thought that I would win a single award in my entire life.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Never, never, never, never, never would happen to me. Never, ever. So I was like, well, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to really thank the people in my life that have inspired and encouraged me. And first and foremost, that's my mom. And my mom, she was a single mom. We grew up really poor. And, you know, like food stamp poor. I was born in Louisiana, as was my brother.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And, you know, my mother was high school dropout, but put herself back through school with two kids, single mom, and got a nursing degree. Wow. and really worked and fought really hard to make a better life for herself and her kids.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And I saw that and I saw her do, if there was a shift that came up, she would take that. I saw her do those extra, I don't know, but they were these really long shifts, at least 12 hours. And then she would do night shifts and I saw her work and I saw her dedication. And I watched her educate herself. I watched her and it taught me a lot.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And she was always very creative and really kind of broke the mold in her family. So that was a big lesson for me.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah. Well, I was in art school and studying to be a painter. Oh, nice. Yeah. There's nothing you can't do. I was like, after a stint kind of, It's funny, you know, I'm negotiating in my head things that I want to talk about or not because I actually don't talk about a lot of this stuff.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
But it's something in my life too. I'm like, I'm negotiating as well of like, you know, how do you, you know, what do you share? What do you not? What do you keep to yourself? Yeah, and I've been less precious about it.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
I don't paint that much. I draw sometimes and I put a lot of my creative energy. And by the way, I think that's one of the important things in life is to keep learning. I always say I love to be the dumbest guy in the room. And that's a fascinating room to be in and do a lot of stuff. I wish Sean would say that. Yeah, and fortunately I have the opportunity to do that quite a bit. Same here.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
But no, I think it's great to continue to learn to do new things and just to be a beginner again.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
too much probably yeah I'm the guy that makes like a thousand different album covers but I think yeah but album artwork is always consistently been like to me like really cool or like rock concert t-shirt designs and all that kind of I'm a big fucking radio head I'm doing that like every three days we're doing a new t-shirt design and I mean it's something it's a consistent thing and I love that but with the album artwork I did a thousand different covers and then you know what I did I
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
I did this little art project where I was taking a photo of the sky every day. And after about three months, it gets really annoying, by the way, I'll tell you. I'd say to my assistant, I'd be like, can you just grab that photo today? It wasn't from the same place every day, right? No, but it's anywhere you are. It's just like, oh, I forgot. And then you try to make up for it.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Anyway, I had hundreds of photos of these skies. And I thought, oh, maybe that's an album cover. So I did 10 different album covers, just basically cell phone pictures of the sky. And that ended up being kind of the basis of our artwork for our new album. That's cool. Which is called It's the End of the World, But It's a Beautiful Day.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, I did something called A Day in the Life of America. Our previous album in 2018 was called America. And it was that time when the world was kind of getting a little wild. It still hasn't recovered, I think. I was going to say. Specifically America.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
But anyway, yeah, I was inspired by a book that I had when I was a kid, National Geographic, where they took photos in every state on a single day. So we sent camera crews. We actually had 92 crews all over the country. What? In every state in Puerto Rico and as well in Alaska. And we made this documentary about the kind of one day and it was fascinating. We had the birth of a child.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
We had someone pass away. on camera i mean it was like it was a really we saw it all um and it was on fourth of july so we had all the oh no way that's cool yeah how do you like that how do you like um
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Well, I started off and I was a painter in art school. And then I took photography class and I got obsessed. I'd be in the dark room. I don't know if you guys have ever done that, but that's a really fun thing to do to kind of shoot and develop your
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
What was that? Well, I grew up around. My mom was, you know, I had a hippie mom. And she had a lot of really creative friends. And I always thought that I would either be a painter. I don't know.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Oh, wow. Yeah. I love both those things. He was, really. It's awesome. My mom is a great photographer, and I grew up around seeing her photos, and she taught me a lot about photography when I was a kid. So one day, this school had a performing arts section to it, and I would go over and watch the actors And I always thought, man, that is terrifying.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
They are so brave, what they're doing, running around out there on stage. And I didn't understand any of it. I was like, this is just insane. But I asked the school, I started taking a film class, like film as a kind of, you know, fine art, not like film as cinema, as Hollywood movies. So I fell in love with that.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
No, no, we would go, they had like Bolex cameras that you'd rent and you'd shoot.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, so you'd shoot film, black and white film. And then you'd have to send it away to get developed. And we would edit using razor blades and tape. Wow. I mean, there wasn't a single computer. I remember the first computer that came into that art school was a Macintosh and nobody used it. You know, it just sat in the corner.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, so anyway, I was studying painting. I fell in love with photography. I took a film class. I switched my major to film. And then I asked the school to create a class for directors about acting. And I bothered him. I went there maybe 200 times and the lady kind of looked at me and frustrated one day and says, you know what? I admire your persistence.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Acting for directors. So I thought like, okay, I'm studying film, even though it was a kind of arty farty fine art film. Yeah. Right. But we should understand what acting is. Right. I had this little secret. I was, I thought, this is interesting.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Well, they created the class after I bugged them. And there was like, I don't know, maybe four or five people. We were doing, you know, acting like animals and doing all these experiments. And, you know, I don't know how much I learned in that class. But shortly after that, I had dropped out of college. I ended up in California.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
It's not. It's just not. Well, we all fail a lot, right? I mean, I always say I fail more than anybody that I know. I fail all the time.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, I mean, I'm actually an introvert. Yeah, me too. Which is bizarre because of my choices out there as far as work goes.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, it's a strange thing, but, you know, when I'm done with a show, I literally leave the show. Yeah, I go to the hotel room, get food, and, you know, turn on Netflix, and that's it.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, for me, I have work. I love to work. That's my favorite thing in the world to do. I love to work, work, and work some more. And if I have some time, I like to climb. And then I like to free dive, which I just started a couple of years ago.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, it's not. A lot of people, when you say free dive, a lot of people think jumping off of cliffs. Oh, okay. Like me. Free diving is either people focus on depth, people focus on time. There's static diving, there's free diving.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
But again, I'm a beginner. I'm a beginner rock climber. I'm a beginner free diver. I am definitely an amateur.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Jared? Absolutely, yeah. Three minutes for sure, four minutes for sure. No way. Because it goes longer. Oh, people go a lot longer. That's not impressive at all in the world of freediving. That is a beginner.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
In Mallorca, Sardinia, Corsica, all the beautiful places. I just was in Greece. There was some good stuff there. But I focus on depth and I focus on caves. The deepest I've gone is 108 feet. Jesus Christ.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
No, you don't have to. No. Really? That's only with scuba diving. Wow. Okay. So you just use your lungs and that's it. He doesn't know anything.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
You know, there are a lot of shows I've never seen that I've been waiting to see. What do you wanna see? What do you wanna see that you feel like you missed out? What was the Game of Thrones I never saw? I never saw the first season. By the way, I never saw The Simpsons. I never saw Family Guy. I never saw South Park. Me too. But I did see Ozark and I would annoyingly email Jason
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
uh often with um you know thoughts on the plot developments and the characters and how much i love the show and just you know kind of fawning but when you give me notes i'd remind them we're locked pictures locked so this is right keep it to compliments um i have a question first i have a question for all three of you because you're all um wonderfully sober
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
No, I don't think so. I find them to be very peaceful when I climb and when I dive. You have to remain peaceful. If you're 100 feet under the water, sometimes what's wild is you do have a conversation about death with yourself because it's scary sometimes. And then you have these moments of peace that are just outstanding. Yeah.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Being on stage, being underwater, climbing a rock, that you have to be present. You don't have a choice. You have to be so present. And you're not thinking about your phone. You're not thinking about your job, your girlfriend, your boyfriend. You're not thinking about any of that. You're thinking about what's right in front of you. So it's incredibly simple and primal, I think, in some ways.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Really? Super, super, super, super fan. Tron and Blade Runner were the two movies that really changed my life.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
What can you tell us about Tron without revealing... Well, we've been developing it for almost 10 years.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
In a way, yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah, it does. So, yeah, I'm super excited. And for me, like... One of the highlights was working with Jeff Bridges. I was just going to say, any conversations with him on this one? Oh, God, he's just the best. Oh, my God. I had one take where I literally had to say, cut. And they were like, what's wrong? I was like, no, I just can't stop fucking smiling. Yeah.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
You know, it's money back guarantee. That motherfucker gives you everything you ever wanted.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
A little bit of the Terminator thing where that technology comes out into Earth. Oh, I like that. So smart.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Every night. We just played... I mean, the show in Kadat was incredible. I mean, I fell in love with like the entire audience. It was the craziest group of like shit-kicking awesome Americans you've ever seen in your life. Absolutely insane. There were two people dressed like Beetlejuice. Another guy came. I literally brought a guy.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
on stage who was wearing, was it an American flag Speedo or was it just an American flag Speedo?
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
But let me tell you, I was just like, I was smiling the whole time. I'm so grateful to be in front of
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
these people and and it was just incredible so yeah i've had the worst things happen um and uh and the and the most amazing we we every night there's a you know catastrophe of some kind like the mic goes out you fall over and right yeah you're playing all these major major cities around the world but i also see here you got you got a couple sold-out shows coming up in kazakhstan and in azerbaijan as well like what's it like wait what
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Oh, absolutely. You know, even yesterday I bought a bicycle a couple of days ago in Wisconsin. So we just take that out after the show, before the show, on the day off, explore the cities.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, and this summer we were in Paris and in London, but we're also in Poland and we're in Italy and then we're headed to Sweden and to Kazakhstan. It's just incredible.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
You know what I love to do when I'm on tour is I love to walk around the cities and kind of get away from the tourist areas and walk through like residential areas and see how people are living. I find that's a really good way to feel the culture of a specific place.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
place but the nice thing is it's not going to poland for the first time it's going for like the 10th time the 15th time because you find you go back to that restaurant that you found you know seven times ago you yeah you have a connection with the people and the place and the food yeah i want to see you play do you have any plans to come through la anytime soon
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, you know, we didn't put an LA date on this tour strategically. We actually are going to play a show next year, which is the 20th anniversary of our breakthrough album, which was called A Beautiful Lie. Yeah. And we are going to play a show in Los Angeles to celebrate that.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
You know, we're making news, but it'll either be a Hollywood Bowl or a forum or something like that. Oh, yeah. Great.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
You know, I'm going to tell you why. Because I have so much respect for it. And I know how hard it is because I've had so many friends do it. That I just feel like... I'd rather enjoy that than be a part of it. I'm also on stage a lot as it is, so I don't have maybe the same itch that other people may have to kind of perform live because I'm getting pretty satisfied on that other side of it.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
It's an absolute honor to be here with you guys. And I'm really blown away by what you've created. It's something so special. It's touched so many people. And my brother's going to be psyched. I didn't tell him I was doing it this morning. Oh, that's cool. That's great.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
All right, well, enjoy the rest of your tour, pal. My first podcast, so thank you. You crushed it. You crushed it. You absolutely destroyed it. Apologies to everyone if I fucked it up, but a little practice. No, you did not. No, you killed it, man.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
We just started the US leg of our world tour, which is called Seasons World Tour. Shout out to Tracy in Wisconsin. We were in Wisconsin. Thank you very much. Thank you. Last two shows, we were in Milwaukee and then in Kadat. Oh, wow.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Kadat is a beautiful little town in the middle of nowhere. And today we're in Des Moines.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
I appreciate it. And this is actually my, I think it's my first podcast that I've ever done.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Really? So, yeah. I'm going to fuck it up big time. Listen, Jared, here's the thing with podcasts.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
yeah i would say worse i would say i wore some pajamas i thought someone might be in the pajama yeah look at me here's the stretchy pajama pants and the hoodie and the t-shirt
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
But we started, we actually didn't tour for about six years. It was COVID and then we were finishing an album. So the last time we did a world tour was like 2018, did some dates in 2019. Um, but we just, we did a few festivals last year and then we started, uh, this year I was filming, uh, Tron in Vancouver for four months. I can't wait for that.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And then I had, um, I had a couple of weeks, uh, where we went to South America to start the tour. And then after Tron was done, we went off to Europe and just did seven, eight weeks in Europe.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, please. Just a little stunt to launch the tour. I mean, it's better than just putting it on Twitter.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
No, I mean, I've climbed buildings before and I've always been obsessed with, yeah, I mean, just not obviously not like that, but I've always been really fascinated by the Empire State Building since I was a kid.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
How do you do it? Windowsills, little, you know, if there's kind of a stone feature, use those. But a lot of times it's just the structure, the features on the building.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, we went to the Empire State Building and they said no about a hundred times. You asked? Yeah, we asked and we had to. It was too big of an undertaking. And there's a huge section of the building that's not climbable. I mean, it is out there. How about the whole fucking thing? What are you talking about, man? But it was fun, man. It was an incredible adventure.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And to sit up there for, you know, we actually did it two days in a row, kind of a day to climb it, another day to film it.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
reach and start your climb i mean stuff like that i just yeah the first yeah i was just gonna say the first yeah yeah the first step is is is getting them to say yes getting permits to be able to do it um you know and then right you know no they did oh yeah because i i think you know what their big concern actually was wasn't necessarily falling off falling no it was me falling on top of somebody and killing somebody
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Oh, yeah, that makes sense. But I had some climber friends of mine that looked at it. A guy named Alex Honnold from Free Solo took a look at doing that at one point and had decided really that the first section of it was probably not climbable unless you wanted to die. But the only way that I was able to do it was to get permission to get permits.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And I had to be roped up for the sections that I climbed, the sections that were climbable. But it was amazing. Wait, so then you were gonna free climb it? Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot of terminology that gets confusing with climbing, but yeah, I had to be roped up while I climbed the Empire State Building. Had I not, I would be dead because I did fall.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
And, you know, it's a very, very difficult climb. It's not something you can just kind of do without a rope.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
No, I still get, yeah, I experience fear when I'm climbing all the time. I mean, that's what keeps you alive. But I climb with Alex quite a bit. He's a good friend. I climb with Jimmy Chin, who's about to go to, I think he's going to ski down Everest or something crazy. No way. Yeah. But yeah, these guys, they're professionals. I'm an amateur. I do this for fun. It's a hobby for me.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
But there are a lot of times you have to negotiate with fear. You have to have a conversation with yourself. And it's a fascinating thing because you're... I've never heard people talk about death more than friends of mine that are climbing all the time. You're really close to death and I think in a way you're really also maybe a bit closer to life.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
I free dive as well and that's something where you're always having a conversation with yourself about negotiating your limits, negotiating fear. But I don't know, I love it. I think it's really fun. At the end of the day, it's just fun.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was climbing with Alex in Red Rock where I live. I live in Nevada now, by the way. I moved there during COVID. Oh, wow. And I live 10 minutes from some of the best rock climbing in the world. And I was out there climbing with him one day and my rope got cut. On a rock? I was about, yeah, 600 feet up.
SmartLess
"Jared Leto"
I was climbing an overhang about 600 feet off the ground, and I knew I was going to fall, which is actually pretty normal in climbing. Sometimes you fall a couple of times, and that's how you learn. That's how you get better. That's how you kind of make it through.