Jared Leto took method acting to a whole new level while portraying the Joker on the set of "Suicide Squad."
"It was a little worrisome," Viola Davis, who plays Amanda Waller in the flick, told E! News after Leto sent his castmates bullets as a gift. "It made you a little bit nervous, and I'm pretty tough. You know I got into a few fights when I was growing up ... But it scared me a little bit."
She did not meet Leto out of character until after filming wrapped.
"Before that I was only introduced to The Joker ... And I almost had my pepper spray out. You know, 'You remember that bullet you sent me?'"
Leto apparently honed his "element of surprise" by sending his co-stars unusual gifts, including anal beads, porn magazines and animals (dead and alive).
"Now I'm terrified as a person thinking 'Is he crazy?' but the second part was, 'Oh shit! I got to have my stuff together,'" Davis told Vanity Fair in February. "You talk about commitment and then he sends Margot Robbie a black rat. It was still alive in a box. She screamed, and then she kept it."
In an April interview with Entertainment Weekly, Leto said it was "intoxicating" and "challenging" to take on the role of the Joker. And he got in deep:
I knew I had to be committed as much as possible. I had to be committed beyond belief. And I did what I needed to do to deliver the best I possibly could. There was a lot on the line, and I want to do justice for all the work that has been done before. It’s not a part-time job. It’s immersive. It takes over your life, and that’s what I needed to do for myself. Other people can show up and are genius but I did what I needed to do to deliver ... I did meet with people that were experts, doctors, psychiatrists that dealt with psychopaths and people who had committed horrendous crimes, and then I spent some time with those people themselves, people who have been institutionalized for great periods of time. I guess when you take on a role, any role, you become part detective, part writer, and for me that’s my favorite time of the entire process, the discovering, the uncovering, and the building of a character.
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