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"I saw the part as not a cross-dressing drag queen but someone who wanted to live their life as a woman," says Rayon. "In my initial meetings before I accepted the part, I made that pretty clear that that was really important to me." Leto was particularly drawn to the film for the chance to work alongside McConaughey, whom he says he wanted to "get in the ring with." "He gave me the courage to jump on board," Leto said. The two both appear startlingly gaunt in the film. Leto has previously fluctuated his weight for parts, losing 25 pounds for his drug addict role in Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream" ("You can see it in my eyes in that film," he says) and gaining some 60 pounds to play Beatle John Lennon's killer David Chapman for "Chapter 27." "It's a tool. That's it," says Leto of the weight loss. "It's a crazy thing to do and incredibly stupid and dangerous. But it's a great tool because it changes how you walk, how you talk, how you sit, how you breathe, how you eat, how you laugh, how people treat you. It creates a sense of fragility." Leto, though, still hasn't seen "Dallas Buyers Club." He deliberately avoids watching the films he acts in. He only caught "Requiem for a Dream" years afterward because, he says, "Darren made me." During the Toronto premiere of "Dallas Buyers Club," he went back to his hotel room to work on an upcoming music video. He has no plans to catch the film any time soon. "Based on the past 48 hours of the most effusive praise I've ever gotten, the film can never live up to any expectation that I would have for it," he says. "I'll give it a few decades."
[Associated
Press;
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