Jared Leto turned down The Little Things because he didn't want to be typecast

Jared Leto originally turned down 'The Little Things' because he didn't want to play another villain.

The 49-year-old actor admitted he was initially hesitant to take on the role of suspected serial killer Albert Sparma in John Lee Hancock's new movie but the director convinced him that the character would be fully rounded.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: "Well, my first thought was to say no. I wasn't sure about playing a murder suspect or potential villain again. But after talking to John, there seemed to be an amazing opportunity. If we could make this heavy on character and make this a really transformative role, I could be interested in having this be the last walk on the dark side of the moon, but only if we could really push it as far as possible. He was open to that and excited. So I just went to town.

"With this, I really wanted to see how complete of a character, from head to toe, from the way that I carried my feet to the way that I spoke — I really wanted to push the boundaries a bit to see how far we could walk toward that line without crossing it."

And Jared enjoyed playing a complicated character like Sparma.

He said: "That was an interesting part of it. Not only do we have the script, but we have to write the script underneath the script. How does Albert Sparma know where to be? How does he have this information? Is he guilty? Is he not? All of these big questions that we had to kind of create a logic board for, which we did. But the physical part of it … The voice was a big key into the character, developing the walk, the research and conversations with criminology experts. I examined FBI transcripts and interrogations. It was quite intense, quite heavy, but really fascinating. For a bit — it starts to take its toll after a while."