Jared Leto

Jared Leto was a teen idol first, playing Jordan Catalano on My So-Called Life, and he spent the next decade deliberately dismantling that image. Requiem for a Dream is the pivot point: an unglamorous, physically punishing lead performance in a film with no interest in making anybody look good. He is also the frontman of the rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars, which has run in parallel with the acting for most of his career.

He is at his best when a director sets firm limits. Fight Club, Panic Room and American Psycho all use him in small doses as a specific kind of pretty, brittle presence, and in Requiem he is the emotional floor of a film that is otherwise pure formal aggression. Mr. Nobody, the least seen thing here, gives him the widest canvas he has been handed.

Then came the method years. His transformations became the story, and the results split sharply. Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club is delicate, specific work and won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor along with a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. The Joker in Suicide Squad is where the process visibly ate the performance, leaving behind a lot of research and very little character.

Recent years have made him a specialist villain for hire: Niander Wallace, Morbius, the Hatbox Ghost, Ares, and Skeletor in the Masters of the Universe film.