The movie Jared Leto doesn’t remember making: “I don’t even know what you’re talking about”
Every actor has a movie or two they wish they could forget. Maybe their experience making a film was bad, or maybe they were going through personal things at the time, and it cast a pall over the movie. Maybe a movie didn’t turn out as they’d imagined in their head, or maybe it was torn apart by critics. Either way, most actors will come clean about these films they wish they could erase from their CVs. Jared Leto, on the other hand, employs another tactic when asked about one of his lesser movies: he claims he doesn’t remember making it.
In the late ’90s, Leto was a million miles away from the ridiculed rock star/method actor he is today. At that time, the hot young actor was transitioning from television to film, having come to fame playing teen dreamboat Jordan Catalano alongside Claire Danes on My So-Called Life. His initial forays into the world of movies were slightly scattershot. He made his debut in the weepie How to Make an American Quilt alongside Winona Ryder before taking on a supporting part in the abysmal serial killer thriller Switchback.
That same year, though, he also made his first foray into the world of “the method” when he played long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine, who died tragically at 24. Leto immersed himself in the real Prefontaine’s life, met his family, adopted his accent, and even ran like him. The late runner’s sister was reportedly so struck by how closely Leto resembled her brother that it brought her to tears.
Prefontaine wasn’t a box office hit, although it did increase Leto’s standing as an actor in Hollywood. However, his next film would undo a lot of the good work he’d built up – and he’d completely deny the fact it even existed less than four years after its release.
Urban Legend was released in September ’98, and though it made a healthy amount at the box office, it was dismissed as a Scream rip-off by most critics. Leto starred as crusading student journalist Paul Gardner, a man determined to discover the identity of the Parka-wearing serial killer chopping up students at his University, all while using urban myths for ideas. The main problem with Urban Legend isn’t the concept, which is pretty novel. Instead, the issue is director Jamie Blanks’ complete inability to generate any scares or thrills from that concept, which leaves the movie in no man’s land. It also didn’t help that Leto, as the co-lead, completely sleepwalked through the role, looking like he’d rather be elsewhere.
In 2002, though, when Leto sat down for an interview with IGN, he all but confirmed he genuinely didn’t want to be anywhere near Urban Legend. When the interviewer asked him about it, he deadpanned, “What’s that?” and then proceeded to semi-jokingly gaslight the poor guy into thinking he was suffering from memory loss. When it was pointed out that he starred as the student journalist, he replied, “Get the fuck outta here! What are you talkin’ about? I don’t even remember that.”
By the end of a frustrating couple of minutes, where Leto doubled down by saying, “I don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about, dude” and “that’s so weird. I’ve never even heard of that movie,” the interviewer had clearly cottoned on to what Leto was doing.
He smirked, “Seems like you’ve erased a minor historical footnote in your burgeoning film career,” and a grinning Leto said, “I must have had a blackout.”
Indeed, in the only moment that he even approached a straight answer, Leto added, “You live and you learn, you know what I mean?”
