How Jeff Bridges bonded with Method-acting Jared Leto on ‘Tron’ set

According to Rob Lowe, there are two kinds of actors: the Jeff Bridges of the world and the Jared Letos.

“You, I know, are like me of the School of Actor where we show up and do it,” Lowe said on his Sirius XM show Literally! with Rob Lowe while probing Bridges for behind-the-scenes scoop from the set of Tron: Ares. “There’s not a lot of artifice around the edges. 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.”

Leto plays the titular Ares in the upcoming film, while Bridges reprises his role as as Kevin Flynn, who, in the original 1982 film, is a computer programmer who’s whisked into the machine and forced into a dangerous, neon-hued survival game.

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“I hadn’t met him before. I’m saying, ‘What’s it gonna be like?’ because he was also a producer of the [film], big fan of the original, working on it for 10 years,” Bridges said of Leto. “I came in and — you know how each set has like a little, you know, each set has a different vibe? 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.'”

Bridges went on to explain how he likes to get to know the other actors, “get as loose and comfortable with each other so we can relax when we’re doing the work.” While he thinks the “please call me by my character’s name” camp works just as well, he didn’t know how to relate to Leto.

“You know, his name was Ares in the [movie] and I ended up going, ‘Hey Air. What’s happening, man?'” he said. “And I say, ‘Is it okay if I call you Air?’ You know? And he says, ‘Yeah, sure you can,’ and then we got loose, and we had — it was just wonderful. I mean, we just, we jammed, you know? We kind of had a lot to — you know, the music, we could — you know, a lot of stuff.”

Lowe was surprised to find out that not only is Leto, the 30 Seconds to Mars frontman, a “rock star,” but so is Ares.

“Oh, Air was,” Bridges, a singer and musician also, said. “I won’t tell you ’cause we get into some music stuff in the [movie], and it’s quite good. He’s wonderful in the part though, and I’m so happy to be a part.”

Tron: Ares, a standalone sequel to 2010’s Tron: Legacy, also stars Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan, Gillian Anderson, and Sarah Desjardins. It will be released on Oct. 10, 2025.