Jared Leto Was Totally Unaware Of COVID-19 At First Due To A Secret Desert Retreat

Jared Leto is famed for his intense commitment and dedication to virtually every role he plays, going so far to get into character that his reputation as something of a bohemian and much more eccentric version of Christian Bale is fully deserved.

For his Academy Award winning performance in Dallas Buyers Club, he shaved off his eyebrows and waxed his entire body for the duration of the shoot, as well as losing 30 pounds. Meanwhile, to play John Lennon’s killer in Chapter 27, he packed on 67 pounds in a short period of time and gave himself gout in the process.

Then there are the infamous tales from the set of Suicide Squad where he gifted his co-stars with things such as dead hogs, bullets, used condoms and anal beads, while refusing to speak to anyone out of character. He even wore contact lenses for Blade Runner 2049 that rendered him almost completely blind, and required assistance getting to and from his trailer as a result.

Possibly the most Jared Leto story of all, though, was the news back in March that he had no idea the world was gripped by the Coronavirus pandemic after spending almost two weeks at a silent meditation retreat in the heart of the desert where technology had been outlawed. In a recent interview, the 49 year-old offered up some more details about his bizarre experience, and said:

“Just in that short amount of time, when I came out it was a shutdown, a state of emergency, the whole world had changed. But when we were in there, they didn’t tell us. We didn’t have our phones, there was no talking, of course, no eye contact, no TV. And the teachers, they made a decision. ‘Let’s not disturb the participants’.  I didn’t turn on my phone until I went back to LA. I got back and I was kind of shocked. It was like Rip Van Winkle. I had this great tool to deal with stress and things in life. But I don’t think anything can quite prepare any of us for what we all went through in the beginning.”

Of course, he could have stayed at his mysterious and very strange retreat for an entire year and still wouldn’t have to hit the promotional trail for Morbius, which has since been pushed all the way back to January 2022. COVID-19 has certainly changed the world as we know it since restrictions first started getting put in place last March, but the actor was too busy doing Jared Leto things to even notice at the beginning.