The bad news: I think we officially have to stop referring to Jared Leto as Jordan Catalano. The good news: The Best Supporting Actor category of the Oscars has been a lock all season, and Jared Leto has won as predicted. Many of us have been pleasantly surprised that Jared has risen from begrudging heartthrob to emo rock star and now (finally) to award winning actor. Jared has played his hand well after a 5-year acting break and come out on top.
From the early promotion and trailers of Dallas Buyers Club, it was clear that Jared’s performance as transgender AIDS patient was a standout. His portrayal in the full-length movie revealed even more. Jared infused the Rayon character with full empathy and rounded corners, and he refused to treat her as a stock cliché. Grace and levity was just as big a part of his performance as the physical transformation. His follow-up interviews have focused upon how much he adored Rayon and loved living inside her skin. Jared’s challenge in the coming years will be to see if he can find a role that tops this one. This could be Jared’s peak, and I think he’d be perfectly fine with that.
Jared held his mom’s hand in the audience while the nominees were announced. He and McConaughey had a swell hug, and then Jared confidently strode onto his speech. Jared spoke about his single mom’s struggles in bringing their family up: “Thank you mom. Thank you for teaching me to dream.” He gave a shout-out to 30 Seconds to Mars too! Jared dedicated his award to “the 36 million people who lost their lives to AIDS.” What a great and humble speech. Congrats to Jared!
Photos courtesy of WENN
Loved what he said about his mom. What a grateful son.
His mom is a great lady. I had the chance to see her backstage (when I passed out from heat… so embarrassing) at a concert and she was just sitting off to the side, basking in the glow of her sons’ talent with a smile on her face only a mother could have.
Of COURSE he won! Anyone who saw that movie knows he OWNED that movie. Without his performance, it would have been noticed for Matthew Mc weight loss and nothing more. Like I said before, if they started handing out Oscars for starving yourself for the role, only women would win.
I so disagree. I thought Matthew was absolutely amazing in his performance, and it wasn’t because of his weight loss. He did a beautiful job in that performance and became that character. It would have been easy to play it over the top as it would be an easy line to cross in some scenes, and he never did. He gave a beautifully layered performance and I forgot it was Matthew. He deserves the Oscar for Best Actor.
I like Matthew McConaughey. Really, and I thought he did a fine job, but I don’t think he portrayed an “Oscar winning” performance. I’ll quote myself from another thread to explain: “Having seen DBC, let me say that (Jared Leto’s) portrayal of Rayon was far from a characature of a transgender female. He WAS a woman. He walked, talked, dressed, acted, moved, and completely embodied the femininity that many women today would kill for. He sashayed that movie to the Oscars. Realistically, it wasn’t much of a stretch for a Texan man who grew up in the 80′s to play a Texan man in the 80′s. Alright so he was a sick, emaciated and bigoted Texan, but still. McConoughey wasn’t stretching his acting wings too much. Instead of being excited to see high school girls, or excited to see buried treasure, or excited to sell diamonds, he was excited to sell medications. He starved himself for the role, but if that alone won Oscars, Hollywood women would be winning all of them.”
It isn’t that he didn’t do a good job playing the character, it’s that for an Oscar I want to be blown away; whisked off to some other land where the story is taking place and completely lose all ability to picture the actor as anything other than who they are portraying. I found myself thinking, “Gee, he’s really playing this well” and that right there tells me that it wasn’t Oscar worthy in my (completely meaningless) opinion. He didn’t ruin the movie, in fact he was good in it, but he was Matthew Mc doing what he does. Being Texan with a dash of bigot and really skinny. He was still a flirtatious womanizer. For that reason, Jared Leto got my vote and Matthew gets a nod, but I don’t think he should get the award.
I agree, he played a wonderful part, and really really deserved it. but that campaign tho, absolutely spot on. he should write the hand book on oscar campaigning, he managed to be everywhere without being over exposed and my heart melted at the way he spoke about rayon. also was a wonderful (if not slightly cringy in parts) speech.
Great great speech overall. 🙂
Agree – great speech. Lucid, touching, intelligent, not smartass – I had no idea he was like that!
Beautiful speech. The best of the night. He covered a lot of ground and never wavered. I was seriously touched.
I’m happy for him. He was great in requiem so I love that he’s acting again.
Not so happy about his hair but oh well lol
He deserved an Oscar nom for “Requiem” in my opinion.
Such a graceful performance, the only time I haven’t cringed at a males attempt to play a woman. Congrats Jared.
Have you seen Breakfast on Pluto? The movie is hit or miss but Cillian Murphy was so so good as a transgender women.
Congrats to Jared, a really wonderful actor. The only other thing I’ve seen him in was Mr. Nobody, & I was transfixed. Great speech, too!
Forever salty about this and Fassbender not winning.
Me too. My left eye is twitching. Michael was so skeezy and creepy in that movie. I mean, from the minute he put his hands on Patsy, I looked away and my stomach rolled. He was so f’ing gross and disgusting. I’m sad he didn’t win.
And it’s like, I know I shouldn’t be because Michael himself said he wasn’t going to get upset about or bother himself but all this just comes across as ass-kissing vs. actual performance. Especially after seeing the ijterviews where he talks about his character, there are so many subtleties to it emotionally. Ugh. I can’t with this. And you know, I’m scared about the other categories 12 Years is in.
I’m not a Fassbender fan but I have a lot of respect for him now for not giving in to what I think is utterly ridiculous – Oscar campaigning. In a perfect world, actors would win because if their talent, not how many asses they’ve kisses or how many back door deals nasty Harvey Weinstein has done. I predict Fassbender will eventually win won though.
I hardly think this is a case of ass-kissing vs. actual performance because there are plenty of people (myself included) who believe that Jared Leto acted his ass off in Dallas Buyers Club. That’s not to diminish Fassbender’s performance but to act like Jared only won the Oscar because he played the game is pretty unfair when he really inhabited the character of Rayon and gave what is undoubtedly the performance of his career in that film. Fassbender might have been really good but so was Jared Leto.
+10000
I’m biased because I’m an endless Fassbender fan, so yes, I’m salty that he didn’t win. On the other hand it’s the Academy and if you’ve watched the Oscars for the last 10 years it was rather clear that he wasn’t going to win. I highly doubt he himself was expecting to win this – he wasn’t ass kissing, he didn’t ruin his body with insane diets, his character was incredibly repulsive (without a comic hyperbole like Waltz in the Tarantino movies) and he seems like an actual person with all the lights and shades, not a typical Hollywood “role model”.
Maybe you didn’t see Fassy in Hunger. He did plenty to ruin his body with ‘insane diets’.
I did and yes, he looked horrible. But I meant specifically this time for his role in 12YAS for which he was nominated. Back in 2008, while imho he should have already been nominated for “Hunger”, nobody knew him (only those Sherlock Holmes nutters like me might have loved him already in the movie with Rupert Everett), so it wasn’t really a big deal.
Same with me. Fassbender should have two or three nominations and an Oscar by now, and I’m more upset than I expected at his loss. I knew he was an unlikely win for TYAS because of the nature of the character and the resistance of many Academy members to the subject matter, but the film owes much of its greatness to his performance
I loved Leto in DBC but I was secretly rooting for the Somali guy in Captain Phillips. Any actor should be proud of that performance and he’s not even a professional. He showed up at open call for Somali pirates and won the part. He has almost as much screen time as Tom Hanks and puts in a withering, desperate, heart-wrenching performance. He was the best thing about that movie.
Nope. Jordan Catalano forever!
Jordan 4-EVA! No matter how many hard-hitting films he does, no matter how much he develops as an actor or gets high recognition from the industry, let’s try to remember that for one.glorious.television.season, he was prettiest tortured bad boy to ever live in our dreams.
My first thought when his name was called: “Jordan Catalano won an Oscar!!!”
He will always be Jordan to me. 🙂
Completely agree, it was when he was so hot but without all the douchey undertones.
He’s really gorg. Love what Ellen said about him bring the most beautiful!! So true!
His speech was beautiful. I was really touched.
Me, too. I teared up!
I choked up too. Beautiful.
Robert Pattinson just felt a renewed spark of hope.
HAHAHAHAHA!
Pure gold!
But Robert isn’t as pretty as Jared, not in his dreams…..plus, I’m not too convinced that Robert can act.
Eh, he can do about as well as Leto did at the same age…
I wouldn’t say so. Leto was in requiem for a dream at roberts age, great movie. Leto was never wooden like robert.
His speech was wonderful
A great movie. I loved him and Matthew in it. And his speech was one of the best I’ve ever heard at the Oscars and he never wavered in it. So many you are tense for them because they aren’t holding it together very good or aren’t naturally very eloquent.
Great speech, he was wonderful in DBS. Congrats Jared.
Congrats jared,truely deserved!
Call me cynical but I thought the Ukraine and Venezuela references were too shallow. He should have stayed away from such deep subjects when he couldn’t do them true justice. The AIDS topic, while also deep, was on topic because of the film. Otherwise, it was a pretty good speech.
They were shallow. The Ukraine and Venezuela are both the latest cause célèbre. However, in Jared’s defense he couldn’t exactly stand up and do a soliloquy when he only has 2 minutes to talk.
What’s interesting though is that there’s a big appeal on Twitter, from Venezuelans, asking celebs to mention Venezuela in their speeches tonight.
I didn’t know that. Interesting…
I actually better about his speech knowing that. I had thought it a bit pandering, but if people from the countries affected want to be mentioned, I find that to be a very different situation.
Maybe he felt weird about being broadcast worldwide getting an acting award when the Ukraine and Venezuela are such recent victims of political unrest. If I lived in those countries, I’d be scared to death because of the uncertainty of the situation so I’ll give him a pass on this.
I think it is cynical. The theme of his speech was to stay true to your dreams and keep fighting for what you believe in. He was showing support for the citizens of two countries, potentially on the brink of war, whose civil rights have been threatened and whose “democracies” have crumbled. In both cases ordinary citizens have taken up the cause and many have died for it. People might think that’s not appropriate fodder for the Oscars but it’s in line with the rest of his speech and a service to those unfortunate civilians who need their message heard.
I just saw Dallus Buyers Club today with my husband and what a stellar performance on his and Matthew’s part(s). I think I was more blown away by Jared’s performance. I kept telling my husband my theory that he could have easily coasted on his sex symbol image as Jordan C but probably wanted to escape that rut. (He was sooo hot in How To Make An American Quilt!!!)… I always suspected he wanted more and I believe this is the role he was meant to play! I had a difficult time forgetting the blinds about allegedly raping groupies. Although I strongly object to the behavior if true and have to say guilty or not, it doesn’t change my opinion on his performance. There are others like Kevin Spacey who allegedly is a pedophile, R Kelly as well, etc… It’s tough to reconcile my opinions and support of brilliant artists in the midst of allegations of bad behavior…but in a perfect world I would boycott any one guilty of acts which they are accused. Currently I can’t bring myself to watch Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson – both actors whom I formerly was a devoted audience member. I digress. I agree Jared’s speech was brilliant and wonderfully sincere.
They’re not just blinds–when I looked it up, I only went to three sites–two were individual tumblr posts and one was a groupie site, where they were all talking about f’ing Jared–I found three different women who said that he started choking them without their permission.
Here are the sites:
http://aimmyarrowshigh.tumblr.com/post/23572924166
http://www.voy.com/16357/23620.html (this is the groupie forum)
http://www.gossiprocks.com/forum/miscellaneous/136188-jared-leto-hurts-like-satan.html
Where’d you hear that Kevin Spacey was a pedophile?? I’ve read that he was bisexual, with a strong leaning towards young, foreign men–but other than that, I’ve never heard anything about his personal life–well, other that he was an asshole, which breaks my heart.
I’ve never read a blind that said Kevin Spacey is a pedophile. Just that he’s allegedly not nice, does drugs, and has sex with younger men. That’s a really awful thing to just throw around.
“That’s really awful thing to throw around”… That is exactly why I prefaced claims with the word alleged. This is a gossip site, there are a lot of awful things thrown around about celebrities and we air them out for entertainment and debate. If anything you hear or read offends your delicate sensibilities perhaps you may want to rethink participating in gossip blogging.
His mother is beautiful
STUNNING.
Fashion and YUM.
he just broke every young single mom’s heart
I expect that his Ukraine comment is one reason why the Russian TV station refused to air the Oscars on their side of the world. Light being shone in very dark places is ALWAYS appropriate~too much of this country hides in inane crap like reality tv rather than taking a real look at what is going on around them. We don’t have ENOUGH information about these things, not too much.
I doubt they care about some comment. There is 12 hours time difference with Russia (Moscow), so very few people watch Oscars anyway. And now, when people are outraged and scared of even a possibility of war, they’ll devote morning hours to political discussions rather than a Hollywood show. I think it makes sense.
The Academy got it right. Lupita just won her first Oscar and Jordan Catalano is beautiful! Contracts!
Blown away by both his speech and his performance.
Such a multifarious person. Congrats.
He’s a douche and a pretentious poseur. And Oscar won’t change that.
Love the Jesus look. I think that’s his next big role. He already looks the part.
Winning one for the Echelon, Jared!
I just woke to see that Jared won. I am so pleased for him loved him in DBC my heart broke. His speech was beautiful and you could see the love he has for his mother. She looked beautiful as well. Now OT who is Ellen he referenced in his speech? Also loved his little snacks in his seat.
Still smarting about Leto winning over Barkhad Abdi.
Yippppppe!!!
lovelovelove him and his part in the film brought it home.
I don’t buy into blinds or groupie tales, I need to see receipts!! anyone can start saying crap. This man is honing his craft and becoming very good at it.
Since we are losing good dramatic actors, I am always happy to see others bite off unusual parts and make them Oscar worthy!!!
yesssssss
@Truthful
I totall agree.
Love him, he really deserved this. He’s so underrated usually.. but now, finally, can you cut your hair Jared?
Love Jared leto, everything about his speech was so perfect. But, I will never stop calling him Jordan catalano!
Excellent speech, classy, humble, gracious and full of meaning.
I had no idea that he is so eloquent and classy, well spoken.
Thank you for mentioning Ukraine and Venezuela, their struggles to have a better life.
Hands off Ukraine, ruthless Putin and his crooks.
Excellent speech, classy, humble, gracious and full of meaning.
I had no idea that he is so eloquent and classy, well spoken.
Thank you for mentioning Ukraine and Venezuela, their struggles to have a better life.
Hands off Ukraine, it’s a sovereign country.