Jared Leto interview: ‘I lived with a man dying of Aids’

Steve McQueen’s ‘12 Years a Slave’ is about to make Londoner Chiwetel Ejiofor a huge movie star, and possibly an Oscar winner. We met him for a chat. Remember the name: Chiwetel Ejiofor. Give it three months, and it’s no stretch to imagine this 36-year-old British actor holding not just a Bafta in his hands, but also an Oscar for Best Actor, making him the first black British actor ever to win an Academy Award. All for playing the lead role in extraordinary new film ‘12 Years a Slave’, the true story of a free man kidnapped and sold into slavery in nineteenth-century Louisiana. As the desperate but buttoned-down Solomon Northup, Ejiofor gives the performance of a lifetime – intense, brutal and impossible to wipe from your memory.While we’re playing with our crystal balls, let’s also imagine another exciting scenario: Steve McQueen, the 44-year-old black British director of ‘12 Years a Slave’, could very well win the Best Director award at the Oscars. It would be a double triumph for Britain – and a significant milestone for black British talent in an industry that’s stubbornly run by white men.When I meet Ejiofor in Soho to talk about the film, it’s obvious that his performance in ‘12 Years a Slave’ is much more than just another role for him. Not only does it speak to difficult historical realities about the relationship between white and black, but it also delves deep into his family’s heritage. As he puts it, ‘There’s the personal, emotional journey of being a black man an

Tabloid controversy, explicit sex, awards glory. Time Out meets Adèle Exarchopoulos, the 19-year-old lead in a bubbling French scandale Remember the name: Adèle Exarchopoulos. This talented young French actress’s breakout role has already seen her eclipse the achievements of French film icons such as Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve or Jeanne Moreau at a similar age. And that’s no overstatement: check out what they were up to at 19 – some theatre, a bikini stunt for the paparazzi, a few flops.They hadn’t starred in a Palme d’Or-winning film such as ‘Blue Is the Warmest Colour’, that's for sure. It’s an explicit portrait of two young women falling in love. Back in May at the Cannes Film Festival, jury president Steven Spielberg decided to split the coveted Palme three ways, awarding it jointly to Exarchopoulos and her onscreen lover, 28-year-old Léa Seydoux, as well as the film’s director Abdellatif Kechiche (‘Couscous’).Outrage followed when Seydoux and Exarchopoulos suggested they had been exploited during several weeks of explicit sex scenes. The director hit back, saying he was ‘humiliated’. As if that weren’t enough, the author of the graphic novel on which the film is based, Julie Maroh, accused all three of colluding in a straight fantasy of what lesbian sex might be…We caught up with Exarchopoulos to find out what it’s like to be a teenager at the centre of such an extraordinary storm. Did you get to know Léa Seydoux before shooting the