(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still / Alamy)
Sat 8 November 2025 21:15, UK
As arguably cinema’s pre-eminent living legend, almost every actor in the business would leap at the chance to work with Clint Eastwood, especially if he offers them a role. Unless, of course, that person happens to be Jared Leto, who turned his nose up at being directed by an icon.
In a way, it makes sense that he would be one of the very few names in Hollywood history who’ve ever had a plum part brought to them on a plate by a four-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker and turned it down, because it sounds like a very Jared Leto thing to do, especially given his reasons.
He’s got an Oscar of his own, but he also has two Razzies, and seems incapable of realising that he’s the butt of the joke. Plenty of method actors take their preparations to extremes and have become masters of their craft, like Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman, to name just four, but whatever Leto does is something else entirely, and he takes himself far too seriously when he’s doing it.
Did he really need to remain in character when shooting fucking Morbius, of all things? He did not, but he’s Jared Leto, so he did it anyway. He’s also scaled the outside of a German hotel without a harness for some reason, possibly started a cult, and put himself in a wheelchair by drinking pints of microwaved ice cream laced with olive oil for Chapter 27, a film barely anybody saw.
As a result, that ranks his rejection of Eastwood’s advances among the least weird things he’s done. Admittedly, the film bombed at the box office and was inferior to its companion piece, but in another timeline, it was Leto and not Jesse Bradford who played Rene Gagnon in Flags of Our Fathers.
Why did he reject one of cinema’s most indelible names, a chance that doesn’t come around too often, and never came his way again? Because The Used, who had that one song that was pretty popular more than 20 years ago, asked 30 Seconds to Mars to open for them on their tour for the princely sum of $250 a night.
“I think this is the deal right now,” he told The Oklahoman. “I’m focusing on the music; it’s what needs to be done. I certainly can’t make films right now, and I’m happy to be out here doing this.” There are dozens, if not hundreds, of Leto’s peers who would do anything to work with someone of Eastwood’s standing and magnitude, but what did he do when it was presented to him on a silver platter? He opted for his band to get billed below Seether.
He wasn’t even a man of his word, either; Flags of Our Fathers wrapped production in early 2006, right around the same time the one-time Joker was filming his portly role as John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman. Not only did he knock back a legend, he ended up making a significantly worse movie instead, and one that had a detrimental effect on his health, which is classic Jared Leto behaviour.
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