Multi-hyphenate entertainer Jared Leto is ready to step into the polished shoes of the late, great fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld for an upcoming biopic. Leto will both star and produce the film through his production company Paradox alongside his partner Emma Ludbrook and in partnership with the Karl Lagerfeld fashion house.
While there’s no director attached to the project yet, the Academy Award-winning actor tapped three people from the German couturier’s inner circle as executive producers, including Pier Paolo Righi, Lagerfeld’s fashion house chief executive, Caroline Lebar, senior VP image and communications, and Sébastien Jondeau, Lagerfeld’s personal assistant and bodyguard.
Lagerfeld’s eponymous brand told WWD that the film is set to follow “key relationships” in the designer’s life “told through an unpredictable lens, much like the man himself.” Leto explained to the outlet that the project will explore a “multitude of relationships” and “convey different parts of his life.”
Leto also got the blessing from the designer himself to portray his likeness. He recalled meeting him for the first time and telling Lagerfeld he wants to play him in a movie. Leto told WWD the designer replied, “Only you, darling, only you.”
The biopic news comes one week after the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute announced that its 2023 theme and exhibition will honor the life and work of the iconic fashion designer. “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” will encompass his six-decade career which lasted until his death at the age of 85 in 2019.
The fashion wunderkind kicked off his career in 1954, winning the esteemed Woolmark Prize in a tie with fellow up-and-comer Yves Saint Laurent. Lagerfeld went on to become Pierre Balmain’s assistant just a year later, before taking the reins as art director at Parisian fashion house Jean Patou. Later, Lagerfeld would go on to helm Chloé, take on a life-long partnership at Italian fashion house Fendi in 1965, before eventually becoming the chief artistic director at Chanel.
Leto, who has traveled in fashionable circles throughout his career, has also portrayed another real-life fashion figure, Paolo Gucci, in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, alongside Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, and Al Pacino.
For Lagerfeld, Leto wants to “portray him on screen as honestly as possible” and wants to reveal the man under the surface. “Karl was a human being. We all have beauty within us and we all have faults. We have masks and then we have moments when we reveal the mask. I’m always interested in seeing what’s behind the mask.”
The actor and musician called the film a “full-circle moment” adding, “Karl would be proud of what we are doing.”
Watch this space for more updates.
