‘Nobody has been spared’
Author Salman Rushdie has been holed up in New York since COVID laid him low early in 2020. So what else could he do but write a story about it?
Fifty is blinking.
And yet Jared Leto — Oscar winner, rocker and hair god — appears unbothered.
Though that milestone birthday would appear to be a marker of sorts for gen-Xers at large, and he is just one of several notables turning the big 5-0 this year — Winona Ryder does so in October, Christina Applegate in November — Leto tells me he has no plans. “I’m not big on birthdays, probably because mine is the day after Christmas,” he said.
Catching up with the actor after he appeared recently as the marquee guest for the fifth annual Audi Innovation Series, organized by Audi Canada — Leto and his locks sparking dialogue virtually this year — he does not rest on laurels in general, I discovered. As someone who has long done many things at once (did you know he was an early tech investor in companies including Uber and Airbnb?), he was keener to talk about staying keyed.
“I don’t tend to invest in things that are in the entertainment space. I really look to founders and who they are … there’s no one-size-fits-all for how I evaluate opportunities, but I have to truly believe in it.”
Fact: Leto was also an early investor in smart home security start-up Nest, which Google purchased in 2014 for $3.2 billion, but missed out on getting hitched to Instagram (he met with them just before the app was sold to Facebook, but was too slow). He also has founded three companies of his own, including VyRT, which deals with the livestreaming of concerts.
The guy who first punctured pop culture by playing the moody object of affection Jordan Catalano in “My So-Called Life” in the ’90s, and remains something of an ageless wonder (he appeared to Audi customers in a tight lavender cravat and skin like a baby seal) takes particular pride in being a multi-tasker. The first rule, he says? To throw out the rules.
“When you’re in a band,” for instance, the Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman explained, “you have to be an entrepreneur and an innovator to survive. You have a collapsing industry … and if you care about having some responsibility and control, and some input, then it’s probably a smart thing to do. I keep my ear to the ground. I listen. I learn. I like to get my hands dirty. I like to build things and then share them…”
Last year, when the pandemic first went into overdrive, Leto made some peculiar news for not knowing it had actually happened. Because he had been in the middle of nowhere at a 12-day silent retreat. Coming out of it, at which point he felt like Rip Van Winkle or like an episode of “The Twilight Zone” — as he revealed on “The Tonight Show” later — he was shocked to find that the whole world had shifted. So I was curious: what has it been like for him since?
“I don’t think anything can quite prepare any of us for what we all went through in the beginning,” he shared. “I emerged from a silent meditation retreat to news of the country’s lockdown. It was a surreal moment. But I had this incredible new skill which helped me through. I don’t mind being alone and it gave me a chance to be in one place, to be still, to focus and to create. There’s been so much tragedy over the past year, I’m very grateful for everything I have.”
One thing he has learned, as a side note? He is as big on banana bread as he is on birthdays.
On the acting side of things, things inevitably have been up in the air. His big upcoming Marvel movie, “Morbius,” for one, was moved around several times but is now slated to come out in January 2022. But he did head back to work, earlier this year, joining the ensemble of the much-anticipated movie “House of Gucci.” An operatic tale swirling around the reallife saga of the Gucci clan, he plays Paolo Gucci — one of the brothers in the second generation — and the whole thing just wrapped in Rome. One of the highlights of his career, it seems.
“Ridley Scott is a master of cinema,” he said. “To be able to work with him on ‘House of Gucci’ was an absolute dream. Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons … working alongside people of that calibre was the experience of a lifetime.”
As for the experience of shooting in Rome, he added, “Italy was on lockdown while we were shooting, so we went from the hotel to set and back to the hotel again. Seeing Rome so empty was surreal. I love Italy and, even though I couldn’t enjoy all the beauty of Rome, it was still such an amazing place to be.”
OK, so a couple more things. Where is the head (of himself ) that he famously carried as an accessory when appearing at the Met Gala a few years back? Do tell. “I still have the head!” he confirmed. As for any further details on his hair regime, Leto was significantly more tight-lipped.
“I can’t give away all my secrets,” he said.
As someone who has long done many things at once, Leto was keen to talk about staying keyed