Jared Leto's Teenage Career Goal: "Be a Drug Dealer"
Apparently when Jared Leto played a drug dealer in Requiem for a Dream, he didn't have to stretch his imagination too far for the role—it was almost his real-life career choice.
In an illuminating letter to his teenage self, the 30 Seconds to Mars frontman wrote he "was at a crossroads in life at 16" and he didn't see either music or acting in his future.
"I thought I might be an artist or a painter. Or maybe a drug dealer. But I didn’t know which path I would take. It’s just fortunate that I chose one over the other," Leto wrote. "If I met the teenage Jared now the first thing I’d notice would probably be that my wallet was missing. He had a pretty tough exterior, it would be hard to crack. I was in trouble quite a bit with the authorities."
Although Leto dropped out of school and admitted much of his delinquent "behavior was related to doing drugs," he doesn't regret what he went through.
"I think everything happens for a reason so it’s good that I learned the lessons that I had to learn," Leto wrote. "But I'd like to go back and reassure my younger self that things will be okay… And that it's okay to dream as big as you can dream. I’d tell him to hang on tight and to bet on himself."
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