Jared Leto Went Method on Set of ‘Tron: Ares’ While Playing “Big Rockstar,” Says Co-Star Jeff Bridges
During an appearance on SiriusXM’s ‘Literally! With Rob Lowe,’ the veteran actor opened up on his experience rejoining the ‘Tron’ franchise opposite Leto and how he navigated his Method ways.
September 19, 2024
Jared Leto’s Method acting ways on everything from Suicide Squad to Morbius have generated so much attention that when Jeff Bridges reported for work on Tron: Ares, he didn’t quite know what to expect.
“I hadn’t met him before. I’m saying, ‘What’s it gonna be like?’ because he was also a producer of the show, big fan of the original, working on it for 10 years. I came in, and you know how each set has a different vibe?” Bridges asked Rob Lowe during an appearance on his podcast series, SiriusXM’s Literally! With Rob Lowe. “There was an interesting vibe on this. I said, ‘How’s Jared? How’s he working?’ ‘He’s all right. You know, we call him Ares, you know, so he goes by his name,’ and I said, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’”
The Disney tentpole — a follow-up to the 1982 seminal science-fiction film Tron and the 2010 sequel, Tron: Legacy — stars Leto as Ares, a computer program sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission to introduce artificial intelligence beings to humans. Bridges has been a part of the entire franchise by playing video game designer Kevin Flynn. Tron: Ares, directed by Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’s Joachim Ronning, features a cast that also includes Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan and Gillian Anderson.
The subject of Method acting came up as Lowe detailed what he’s like on set and how it’s similar to Bridges’ approach. “You, I know, are like me of the school of actor where we show up and do it. There’s not a lot of artifice around the edges. We’ve done whatever work we need to do, we’re doing it in the quiet of our own privacy, so I can go and be Rob, and we can talk about the Lakers or whatever, and they can say, ‘five minutes,’ and we come to the set, and we do it, and then when they cut, we go, ‘Hey, you know, I went to a great Mexican restaurant last night,’” he explained. “Then, there’s Jared Leto, who, you know, when Jared played the Joker, I have a friend who played his best friend. He was Mr. J the whole time.”
Bridges continued the thought by saying that both ways of doing it can “work beautifully,” though when he showed up on Tron: Ares, he wasn’t sure how to play it. “His name was Ares in the show, and I ended up going, ‘Hey Air, what’s happening man?’” he explained. “And I say, ‘Is it OK if I call you Air?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, sure you can.’ Then we got loose, and it was just wonderful. I mean, we jammed, you know?”
He nodded to the music in the film, prompting Lowe to confirm that Leto’s character is also a rockstar. “Big rockstar, man,” he confirmed. “I won’t tell you 'cause we get into some music stuff in the show, and it’s quite good. He’s wonderful in the part though, and I’m so happy to be a part [of it].”
Playing a rockstar isn’t that much of a stretch for Leto, the longtime frontman of Thirty Seconds to Mars. The band kicked off its Seasons Tour earlier this year, on March 14, in Santiago, Chile, at Lollapalooza. Dates continue through the end of the year before wrapping in Dubai on Dec. 12. Most recently, they just finished a series of shows in Australia before performing in Singapore this weekend.
Tron: Ares is due for release on Oct. 10, 2025. Bridges joined Leto, Lee and Peters onstage at D23 last month to tease what’s to come. “Technology and AI is omnipresent in our lives,” Bridges offered during his remarks. “What a perfect time to revisit this world. Or, have this world visit us, because that’s what happens in this movie.”
As someone who has studied acting theory, I fucking hate modern method acting. It has become entirely about actors’ ego.
The original idea behind method acting was to relate your own life experiences to the character’s, to give a more accurate portrayal. Maybe the character just experienced the death of a family member. You as a method actor could relate that to your own life experience of when you lost your parent, to give an accurate portrayal of the character’s grief. You know what that grief felt like, so you can channel that into your acting. To be clear, method acting wasn’t about falling into the role; It was simply relating to them in a way that allowed you to give an accurate portrayal. It encouraged actors to go out and experience all that life has to offer in their day to day lives, because it would allow them to be better actors in the long term.
But modern method acting is almost completely about inflating the actor’s ego. There’s no reason to be “in character” all the time, except to have other people talk about it as a novelty (just like this article is doing!) It’s not helping you as the actor relate to the character, because it’s not actually using your own life experiences to fuel the acting; It’s just using your experience of playing that character to play that character. It’s entirely redundant in a recursive “we know the Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true” way.
I have loved Tron since I was a kid, but Leto’s involvement really is turning me off to this sequel.
Of course he is a “rockstar” in this.
I honest to God have no idea how that man keeps getting hired for more acting gigs. I can’t think of a single, memorable role that he’s ever had that hasn’t been absolute shit. They call him a method actor, but I’ve only ever seen him methodically sand bag a movie.
He did get his ass kicked in Fight Club, do you think he went method there?
A famous asshole plays a famous asshole… What a scoop!
Bridges kept calling it a “show.” Is it not a movie?
It’s a film but I’ve heard many actors and behind the scenes people refer to the film they’re working on as a show.
Technically it’s a Talkie
Tron IN COLOR
TIL thanks!
Leto always go method, like Gary Oldman I think.
I’m waiting to find out what role inspired him to create a cult of underage girls on an island in the carribbean
Tron should have had a movie about the dot com bubble and now they’re going straight to AI when, like, the fuck is the difference in a universe were programs are sentient? Sorry saw this and just had to say wtf. It is a good time to revisit it but maybe define what AI means in Tron? Where programs are people?
